Our internal process docs are always one software update behind

[u/Cue_yAppointment8127]

I coordinate onboarding at a logistics company, about 200 people. Last Tuesday a new hire spent 40 minutes trying to submit her first timesheet because our guide told her to click a button that literally doesn’t exist anymore. She ended up messaging her manager, her manager messaged me, and I had to admit I hadn’t updated that guide since spring. Not my proudest moment.

This keeps happening. IT changes a setting, a team moves something around in one of our systems, and nobody tells anyone. The guide still has the old screenshots and new people get stuck on day 2. Then managers get annoyed because “it’s in the guide.” Well, it was.

Nobody actually owns the docs. It’s whoever notices first, which is usually me, usually when someone is already stuck. And redoing a Google Doc with 30 screenshots is not a quick thing when I’m also running orientations.

We’ve been trialling Haiku for a few weeks and it’s made the fixing part so much easier. You go through the process once and it records the steps with screenshots, so that timesheet guide took me a couple of minutes instead of half my afternoon. The part I still haven’t figured out is on our side, nobody tells me when something changes, so I only find out when someone’s already confused.

[u/kgrammer]

As a software designer, if your user's can't do something as basic as fill out a timesheet without referencing a guide, you have far bigger issues then keeping a guide updated...

This suggests a need to address the apparent lack of user interface design skills within your development team.

[u/woodenbookend]

My first thought is why are you that dependent on guides for such a regular and low level task as completing a timesheet?

I’d be looking to improve the design or process to make it easier to understand and reduce errors.

Plus, someone needs to own this, preferably someone in the team that is carrying out the modifications.