Date: Friday, January 24, 2025
Hello! We are Olivia Arstein-Kerslake, Senior Data Intelligence Analyst and Wen Yi Aw, Data Intelligence Associate from VentureWell’s Data Intelligence (DI) team. VentureWell is a Massachusetts-based nonprofit that specializes in funding, training, and cultivating a pipeline of science and technology inventors, innovators, and entrepreneurs. Together with our stakeholders, we are driven to solve the world’s biggest challenges and create positive social and environmental impact.
Documenting data flows and data storage is key to building a sustainable data infrastructure within an organization. Starting new documentation can be overwhelming if you are looking at a blank page, not knowing where to begin! In this post, we discuss why and how we implement templates in our documentation work, relieving us from that mental burden.
Standardization: One of the key advantages of using templates is standardization. Consistency is crucial, particularly for longitudinal analysis A template provides a predefined structure that guides authors to include all necessary details, such as objectives, requirements, assumptions, and outputs. This uniformity makes it easier for teams to navigate and understand the documentation, even when authored by different individuals.
Efficiency: Templates also promote efficiency. By starting with a framework, staff can focus on the specifics of their work rather than reinventing the wheel each time. This reduces cognitive load, accelerates the documentation process, and minimizes the likelihood of missing crucial information.
Collaboration: Another critical benefit is collaboration. Well-designed templates ensure that everyone involved in a project speaks the same “language.” This shared understanding reduces ambiguity, streamlines communication, and fosters alignment across teams.
Reliability: Templates act as a guide to reflect your organization’s values. For example, you could incorporate a section on fairness or branding in your product specification template. This way, every product discussion will consistently address the topics important to your organization, without relying on any team member’s memory.
There is a wealth of templates and related resources available that can be adjusted to reflect the needs of your organization. Here are some of our favorites:
The types of templates you create should be determined by the types of resources you most frequently produce. Prioritize creating these templates first! At VentureWell, our most commonly used templates include:
Ultimately, templates are a tool for building reliability and clarity into technical documentation. They save time, reduce errors, and provide a solid foundation for effective teamwork. Investing in a strong template today can pay dividends in productivity and quality tomorrow.
Check out our final post tomorrow on asking the right questions from your data systems!
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