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Discussion on: How do you promote knowledge sharing?

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Mykezero • • Edited

Tough one, being the person who wants to acquire the knowledge, you can use these methods:

  1. Take the next maintenance task for any system you do not know:

    • A small ticket is your way into understanding at least the entry point of a system.

  2. Pair program with someone who does know the system:

    • You drive and let them steer you into solving the problem or implementing the system.

  3. Ask your teammates / manager about the system:

    • They will probably give you an overview and show you the essential parts of the program / system / interaction points.

  4. Play with the code and see what happens:

  • Make sure the author has taken into consideration that production resources should be disabled by default; no one wants DEV emails going to customers..

Now, as the person who has the knowledge:

  1. Write tests for your team:

    • Free documentation along with making sure the system works!

  2. Create a wiki and put important processes there.

    • I usually use a markdown editor like Ghosterwriter and using Pandoc to convert the markdown to whatever format is needed.

  3. Be willing to share the knowledge and share multiple times if you must:

    • As a team member, it's your job to empower your teammates. Plus, you may need them to know if you ever want to go on vacation!!