What should you include in an internal product documentation hub?
Last updated: September 2024
Effective product development relies on well-defined processes and information. Keeping internal product documentation organized and up to date helps product teams improve collaboration, reduce errors, and deliver value to customers faster. This is why it is so important to know what kind of information to record and where it should live. When you build clarity around the type and placement of different product resources, you help the team navigate product-building more effectively and achieve better results.
Let's agree on some definitions first. When we say "internal documentation," we are referring to any documentation the cross-functional product team and other stakeholders need access to in order to plan, build, and deliver your product. This typically includes items such as foundational product documents, industry best practices, team processes, documents for capturing knowledge, and training docs for new hires. In the past, people referred to the hubs these documents live in as intranets or wikis. This is different than the content you publish on an external-facing knowledge base. And different, too, from the daily product work (think roadmapping, feature prioritization, and release planning) that takes place within roadmapping software.
In a perfect world, your internal product docs are consolidated and organized in a central knowledge hub. That way, everyone can find, access, and reference shared documentation at any time.
But for most product teams, the reality is that your documentation exists in various formats and is scattered across different tools. Some of it is outdated or in the wrong place. You might have a backlog of docs you have not been able to create yet. Or you are not super confident about what even needs documenting in the first place.
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Use the decision tree template in Aha! software to analyze new pricing models, evaluate potential features, or identify product marketing activities to pursue.
Knowledge-capture documents
Knowledge-capture docs are the output of the team's collaboration and exploration. Keeping your collective thinking all in one place enhances the visibility of new ideas, important updates, and even challenges — helping everyone stay in the loop. Examples of this kind of documentation include:
Collaboration captured on whiteboards
Use this meeting notes template to promote accountability. Assign responsibility for follow-up tasks and establish timelines for completing them.
Training documents
This is where you store relevant training materials for new hires. Maintaining a consolidated view of onboarding information can help shorten ramp-up time and ensure that learning is accurate and valuable. Examples of this kind of documentation include:
Map out your company's roles and reporting structures using this organizational chart.
Of course, you might have other documents you want to include in your knowledge hub. A great starting point would be to initiate a brainstorming session with your team and put together a list of the documents you already have and others you want to create. Natural categories will likely reveal themselves, and you can start to form a plan around what to update, what to write, and how you will organize it all. (If you happen to be moving documents into Aha! software from Confluence, we have an importer tool you can use.)
What types of work are best suited for your roadmapping tool?
Getting product documentation in order is foundational to the team's success. But you are also busy doing all of the other daily product work — updating the product roadmap, defining features, and sending work to engineering. This type of work should continue to happen within a roadmapping tool such as Aha! Roadmaps.
At a basic level, what you store in your knowledge hub is mostly evergreen or early-stage, whereas daily decisions and tasks happen over in a roadmapping tool. It might help to think in terms of unstructured planning versus structured product work.
Early-stage product plans and initial strategies can flow freely in notes and whiteboards in your product hub. Once product goals and initiatives firm up, shift to your roadmapping tool. If you use Aha! software these designations do not really matter because it is an integrated toolset that leverages the same underlying data.
Related:
Maintaining organized and updated internal product documentation aligns everyone around the product development resources needed to drive success. When you use a platform that integrates your product knowledge hub with day-to-day product development work, you are able to connect new ideas and information to the innovation they fuel.
At a basic level, what you store in your knowledge hub is mostly evergreen or early-stage, whereas daily decisions and tasks happen over in a roadmapping tool. It might help to think in terms of unstructured planning versus structured product work.
Early-stage product plans and initial strategies can flow freely in notes and whiteboards in your product hub. Once product goals and initiatives firm up, shift to your roadmapping tool. If you use Aha! software these designations do not really matter because it is an integrated toolset that leverages the same underlying data.
Related:
Maintaining organized and updated internal product documentation aligns everyone around the product development resources needed to drive success. When you use a platform that integrates your product knowledge hub with day-to-day product development work, you are able to connect new ideas and information to the innovation they fuel.
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