The Pattern #3 - A Tough Decision: Development or Documentation?
Balancing Rapid Development and Knowledge Sharing in a High-Pressure Environment
Picture this (or not): You’re part of a high-pressure startup team — a tech lead. Customers need features, investors need targets to be met, and us… Well, we just need investment to make it to the next quarter so we can breathe. You need to make a decision, and you need to make it now — a decision that could affect the foreseeable future of the business…
Sacrifice development time to write documentation or give the order to go full steam ahead?
This wasn’t just a hypothetical scenario for me — it was my daily reality at a recent startup gig. Our dev team was small, scrappy, and racing against the clock. Our product? Promising. Our resources? Limited but highly skilled (shout out to my dev team!) Our to-do list? Never-ending.
In this pressure cooker environment, our tech lead became our human Wikipedia. Need to know why that function was named after someone’s cat? He knew. Curious about that cryptic comment from two years ago? He remembered. His brain held the master key to our digital kingdom.
But here’s the thing: This wasn’t poor planning or negligence. It was survival.
With investors breathing down our necks and customers clamoring for features, every minute counted. Formal documentation often took a backseat to immediate development needs. Our lead’s encyclopedic knowledge became our secret weapon, allowing us to move at breakneck speed and tackle complex issues on the fly.
However, even secret weapons have their drawbacks:
Information bottlenecks during crunch times (and let’s face it, it was always crunch time)
Our poor tech lead was constantly bombarded with questions
The terrifying “what if” of potentially onboarding new developers (if we ever got the funding)
Despite our best efforts and coding marathons, our startup story didn’t have a happy ending. Economic headwinds proved too strong, and we ultimately faced liquidation.
But the lessons we learned about balancing development and documentation in a high-pressure environment? Those are invaluable.
So, how do you juggle knowledge sharing when you’re trying to keep the startup dream from sinking?
In retrospect, our situation highlights how external pressures can shape internal practices. While comprehensive documentation is ideal, sometimes teams must adapt to their circumstances and rely on other methods of knowledge sharing.
For teams in similar situations, here are some lightweight approaches that helped us:
Quick debriefing sessions after solving complex problems
Encouraging detailed commit messages and inline code comments
Regular, informal knowledge-sharing talks
To team leads who find themselves as the primary knowledge holder: Your role is crucial, especially in challenging times. While you may not have time for extensive documentation, even small efforts to share and record information can be incredibly valuable.
In short…
Ultimately, every team’s situation is unique. While robust documentation is a worthy goal, it’s important to balance it with other pressing needs. The key is to find sustainable ways to share knowledge that fit within your team’s constraints and support your current objectives.
What are your tips on knowledge sharing in a startup environment?
Now, I'm curious: What knowledge-sharing hacks have you discovered in your startup adventures? How do you balance the pressing need for development with the long-term benefits of documentation?
Drop your wisdom in the comments below—who knows, your tip might just save another team from drowning in their own code!
Plugs
A collection of interesting links I’ve found from trawling the internet
Al-Imran - Recitation by Sheikh Abdul Mohsin Al Qasim
talhaakhoon.dev - Check out the personal website I’ve been working on ! Comment below if you would like an article explaining how to building something similar end to end.
What I do to remember everything I read - Anas Nuur Ali - Another insightful video from one of my favourite youtubers !
Why I LOVE Cold Showers - On the fence about cold showers ? Check this out to see potential benefits