Why To Document the things?

Why do we write/document?

Introduction

I have always wondered "Why do we need to document or write the things in document? Or Why to document the things?" For finding the answer to these questions we must understand the how information technology and our society work? We have to see equality between both of them.

Equality between society and Information Technology

As ayn rand says in her book "Capitalism: The unknown ideal" that "In order to sustain life, every living species has to follow a certain course of action required by its nature. The action required to sustain human life is primarily intellectual: everything man needs has to be discovered by his mind and produced by his effort. Production is the application of the reason to the problem of survival". Now today's society is built upon the thousand individuals who revolutionized the society by their inventions and their eternal efforts. We owe a great deal to the individual who lit the first fire or the one who made a lantern and also the risk takers who made these inventions within reach of masses. Today's most of the inventions can not exist without these primary inventions. I am an IT professional and whenever I tried to understand information technology, I found a hell lot of similarities with our society.

Hierarchical Structure of Society

Hierarchical Structure of I.T.

Now we come to our main point why do we document?

What would have been happened to today's society if the man who had invented the fire had not told his invention to any other human. We, humans like every other animal is a social animal. We need support, recognition and love from one another for living our life. So that is where power of expressions comes into picture. Why do we talk? Why do we sing? Why do we listen? Because we love to do it. But the problems with these actions are they are not eternal if I tell you something then after one year you might not remember it.

In information Technology If we need to run a successful organization then Document must not be a part of process it must be a part of freedom. We need to document the things because it gives you an ownership of the discovery. Like our analogy between society and Information technology, every inventor must claim or express their invention otherwise either the invention or the inventor will not reach to the masses.

The growth & success of any Information Industry also depends up on the

• Collaborating the efforts of individuals who invented a method/process through which a particular work can be done
  
• Inventing/discovering particular work with logic
  

For these two methods documentation for a given work is must. Because if we are not documenting our work, no other one would recognize it. Without recognition of the work of the individuals no society would succeed. As a programmer we are the individuals who are creating a work process for the society. We believe in power of expression that is why we are in Information Technology and that is why we need to document as the whole society depends up on our effort and our results.

Though it is always cumbersome to write down the things in a piece of paper but that is we can use animations or videos as an alternate to the documents.