Focus on documentation in March

As we are now in March, I am going to focus on writing in the Documentation chapter this month. Not only is this close to the work I am doing, but it is also an important chapter for an Atlassian Administrator. Many Atlassian administrators do not know much about documentation, as that is almost a lost art in our Scrum-influenced world. As a result, many do not know the difference between information and instructions.

Even fewer understand information architecture or have even heard terms like System of Record (SoR), System of Work (SoW), or even Standard Operating Procedures (SOP). Understanding management systems, or control and command systems, is almost seen as heresy in many organizations that use dysfunctional Agile. This is a bad thing, and I want to make sure that as an Atlassian Administrator, you at least understand the benefit of such documentation.

I will also dive into Assets a bit and explain how Assets is also documentation, and show some examples of how you can use it for the Atlassian platform.

Introducing Comala Document Management

As I progress, I want to make sure I have the attention of my Muses so they can provide me with the feedback I need. As such, I have added Comala Document Management to my Confluence setup. This is a great way to keep track of changes in the writings, and I can see who has read things and who has not ;)

I will create some videos on Comala Document Management and how this can help if you need to set up Confluence with ISO-9001 and ISO-27001 compliance.

Adding content to Affinity Studio

This month, I also plan to rebuild the content in Affinity Studio as I am moving from Affinity Publisher 2 to the new platform. It will take a few hours to finalize the layout, as there are some things that do not translate over very well. Once the templating and structure are in place, I will start moving over the content in Confluence to the final format. This gives me a better overview of the final product, and I can start mapping out graphics that I need to create.

Other things...

Besides this, I am also looking to rework some things in the Dark Secrets chapter, where I have added some content and now need to align it to something that makes sense from a reading perspective. There are some parts that I need to group, some that I need to elaborate on, and some I might cut from this book and add to my second book...

I have in january added three new muses to help inspire and push me to finish this book. The three new muses are @Fabrice Huart, @Bryan Guffey and @Matt Doar. Please drop a comment and welcome them so they feel welcome!

I have also created a new block here on the website that shows all the Muses. This is my way of saying thank you for helping me. You can see it on the A3 guidebook home section: https://jimiwikman.se/content/writings/the-advanced-atlassian-administration-guidebook/

I started writing again, and I am focusing on the Roles and the Dark Secret chapters right now. I am not happy with the Roles chapter, and I am trying to get some flow into the text and rewrite things. I am expanding the chapter a bit to include more about what it means to be an Atlassian administrator and what skills and experiences are good to have. I wrote a section on what happens if you fail as an Atlassian Administrator earlier this week. Today I tossed in a ton of text about working in a toxic environment. I know this will trigger some people, but it is an important chapter, so I want to make sure it is in there.

I also purchased a domain, or actually, I bought a bunch of them. I did this as I also changed my email setup, as Gmail was acting up, so I removed them and took back control of my mail. As part of that, I also added the domain https://a3guidebook.com, which is now pointing to the Confluence space where I am writing my book.

I feel that if I can get the Roles chapter in shape, I have a fairly decent amount of content there right now. I will probably move over to the strategy chapter in March and go back a bit later to the Roles chapter to finalize it. At work, I will start a new project which will be a lot of documentation, so it is likely that Iwill add some content there in the next few months.

Overall, I feel that I am getting back to writing again, and things feel like I am back on track again!

Great feedback from @Staffan Redelius and a good reminder from @Bryan Guffey to include that what we do as Atlassian administrators matters.

Here are the chapters in the Introduction:

• Why did I write this book?

• Who is Jimi Wikman?

• My journey to become an Atlassian Administrator

• Your Users Are Incompetent

• Your Work is More Complex Than You Think

• You Are More Competent Than You Think

In the Authority section I added information about leadership with the goal to define 8 leadership styles and how to use them in your role as Atlassian administrator. I know not a lot of Atlassian administrators think about leadership as they are often in a servant position, but I want to make it clear that you need to take lead when you have ownership over a work tool that very often is business critical.

This then bled over to the Strategy section where I added information on organization maturity with some paragraphs about the user adoption process and the user adoption curve. I also started to add information on how to define product and platform criticality using the application criteria and criticality scale. While this is a fairly small part, it is important to be able to do this and show it to management in case you need to show how business critical the Atlassian platform is in an organization. It is also important so you can direct your strategies to the actual criticality so you don't act too lose or too strict in relation to it.

In the Governance I have started to add sections for how to work if your organization have governance and if it does not have. This is mostly for when you don't have it, which is the norm I think, as that can be really tricky and easily burn you out.

The last page is now page 98, but there are some half pages and whole pages still in that mix. Still there is progress, and I am not feeling any writer's block. It is just the process of getting a new job that is taking up most of my attention at the moment, but that should change soon.

As far as writing goes I currently have around 65 pages written, and I am itching to write. I just need to get some work off my plate so I can focus on it. The goal is to have the first draft ready for review after the summer and then go through a few adjustment cycles before it is ready for release. This might be quicker or slower depending on where work takes me, but I have the basics already in my head, so I just need to get things out and written down.

I am not sure how big this book will be, but probably around 600–1000 pages depending on how much in detail I want to go in certain areas. I also have not decided if I want to try to have this as a physical book, or just an E-book, but we’ll see. I’ll focus on writing it first, and then I’ll solve the rest later.