Stop documenting by habit
Decide what is sufficient for your context and invest effort where it supports real work.
A practical book by Kaja Trees
Documentation people can actually use.
Useful, up to date and convenient — without documenting everything.
For business and systems analysts, product people and project leads who need documentation to support decisions, collaboration and change instead of becoming a maintenance burden.
English paperback and Kindle edition are sold through Amazon.
The problem is not a lack of documents
Better documentation solves three recurring failures.
Teams often write more than they can maintain, keep documents nobody trusts, or scatter useful information across tools. The book offers a practical way out.
Make maintenance part of delivery
Connect documentation to workflows so it evolves with decisions, releases and systems.
Design for the next reader
Give information a clear home, structure and purpose so people can find and trust it.
Inside the book
A five-part framework for documentation that lasts.
Each part moves from principles to choices you can make in your own team, project and toolset.
Useful
Understand why documentation matters and how it creates value for people and organisations.
Optimal
Choose content, detail and structure deliberately — including what not to document.
Up to date
Manage AS-IS, TO-BE and workflow documentation in agile, changing environments.
Convenient
Organise repositories, select tools and use AI where it genuinely improves the workflow.
Your documentation
Start from the current reality and create a sustainable team-specific documentation practice.
Put the ideas to work.
The book includes exercises, a documentation kick-off checklist and example structures. Download the companion workbook to use alongside the English edition.
Who it helps
For people responsible for making complex work understandable.
The examples come from real IT projects, but the principles apply wherever teams need shared understanding without unnecessary bureaucracy.
- Business analysts
- Systems analysts
- Product managers
- Product owners
- Project managers
- Delivery leads
- Software teams
- Documentation owners
Early reader feedback
Practical enough to change how people work.
“If you want your organization to succeed, you need to build a system. And building a system requires mapping key processes and creating documentation. In this book, you’ll find clear, accessible guidance on how to create systems and documentation in a way that truly delivers value.”
“The book reassured me that it’s perfectly okay for documentation to evolve — it doesn’t have to be perfect — and that the analyst can decide how to present things based on the situation.”
Start with the next useful document
Fix documentation without overdoing it.
Get the English edition from Amazon, or choose the Estonian edition directly from Kaja Trees.