Documentation: Team Level

Team documentation is a critical part of embedding knowledge in a team. Students must learn to not only accomplish tasks but to effectively convey those accomplishments and the necessary steps in a way that new students and teammates can follow and understand. An effective team cannot require the team advisor to be the sole repository of the team knowledge.

To this end, we recommend that each team maintain a wiki for central documentation. Georgia Tech used to maintain a media-wiki site, but we’re transitioning to using wikis embedded in SharePoint sites. A standard SharePoint site has multiple features (Pages, intended for activity feeds; file sharing, etc.). In 2020, we developed instructions on how to strip a SharePoint site down to be a simple wiki.

Adding documentation to the team wiki should be the students’ responsibility. Otherwise, it creates unnecessary work for the instructor and robs students of a great learning opportunity. In the workplace, their supervisors will not document their work for them, so this provides very practical experience.