I put a lot of work into writing up decent documentation and SOPs and making them available. Does anyone read them? Pfft, not if my work chat history is any indication. Constantly getting pinged for basic-ass questions I’ve already answered thoroughly when I wrote up the docs and SOPs.
And I’ll go ahead and make sure you get another copy of that memo. Mm-Kay?
This is exactly why I stopped writing documentation.
I get the feeling, but documenting systems/processes and writing up SOPs for usage, maintenance, and operation is a required duty.
I started just linking to the documentation instead of answering the questions. Works most the time.
“That’s a stupid question”
You would never hear about all the people who were helped out by your documentation and were able to get by without contacting you.
You wrote them up so when the question comes up you can copy and paste out point then to the line number. Make them feel mildly embarrassed for not looking for it. It won’t stop all of it, but it helps.
“The short answer is <BLAH>, but it can be complicated. Here’s a link to my document. You can find the details on page <X>.”
Been my response for a while. Occasionally, I ask if they’ve got the documentation site bookmarked or if there’s anything in the documentation file that doesn’t make sense. That tends to prod people in the right direction, and it also gets me helpful feedback when people complain that the document is unclear.
