2JulPreserve your most valuable asset by documenting your source code

Most software companies are walking the tight rope when it comes to preserving their most valuable asset – their source code. The vast majority of companies simply don’t have any internal documentation in place explaining how their code works and even if they do, it’s often out date, which is worse than having no documentation at all. When a software engineer leaves your organization unexpectedly, you should be aware that you’ve not only lost a valuable resource, but more critically—the most intimate knowledge about the inner workings of your product which can never be replaced. To use an analogy, this is pretty much equivalent to not having house insurance. When a building is destroyed or pillaged, there is little or nothing in place to re-construct it as it was. Code is the same, and the more complex it is, the less likely you will ever be able to maintain it to the same degree.

While many large, public tech companies seem to be able to get away with this, the real cost comes later on when another software engineer must try to re-construct and reverse engineer the code which the company has spent thousands or millions to develop. The results of such a scenario could be devastating for any organization, especially when there are customers who require urgent updates and fixes.
Our recommendation is to prevent this problem from ever happening. Build time into your development lifecycle to document your systems, or have a company like Essential Instructions work with your engineers to capture and preserve their knowledge. One advantage of having an outsider document your code, is that they can also provide an objective assessment on the quality of your code, much like usability feedback.

Documentation can include written documentation, code comments, diagrams and other materials explaining the high and low level details of your system. These materials can not only describe how the code was architected but also why. This is especially important when legacy use cases have played a role in shaping design decisions.

So just like you’d protect your house or your car with insurance, you should also protect your company’s most valuable asset.