IT Documentation Best Practices: How to Create Docs Your Team Will Actually Use

I'll never forget the day our main server went down at 2 AM, and the only person who knew how to fix it was on a plane to Thailand.

No documentation. No troubleshooting guide. Just a Slack thread with increasingly panicked messages and someone trying to remember "that one thing Dave did last time this happened."

We got the server back up eventually (after calling Dave mid-flight—sorry, Dave). But that incident cost us thousands in downtime and made me realize something important: IT documentation isn't about covering your ass. It's about not being completely screwed when the one person who knows how everything works isn't available.

I'm Yuval, founder and CEO of Glitter AI. I've built and run two startups where I've watched IT documentation go from "we should probably document that" to "holy crap, I'm so glad we documented that."

Let me show you what I learned about creating IT documentation that actually helps when you need it most.

Why Most IT Documentation Fails (And How to Fix It)

Here's the brutal truth: most IT documentation is written by IT people for IT people. Which sounds logical until you realize that the person reading it in a panic at 3 AM probably isn't thinking clearly.

The Common Problems I've Seen

It's written once and never updated. Someone documents the network setup in 2022. Three infrastructure changes later, the documentation is actively misleading. Following it might actually break things.

It assumes too much knowledge. I've read network documentation that said "configure the VLAN." Cool. Which VLAN? What settings? What happens if I mess this up?

It's scattered across multiple places. Server passwords in LastPass. Network diagram in an old Google Drive. Firewall rules in someone's Notion. Good luck finding anything quickly.

It uses screenshots that are now useless. UI changed. Screenshots didn't. Now you're staring at a screenshot of a screen that doesn't exist anymore.

What Actually Works

The IT documentation that saved my team's collective sanity follows these principles:

It's living documentation that gets updated as part of making changes. It's written assuming zero context because the person reading it might be new or stressed. It lives in one searchable place because hunting for information during an outage is hell. And it uses text and diagrams instead of screenshots that become outdated instantly.

That's what we're building today.

Network Documentation: Making the Invisible Visible

Network documentation is weird because you're documenting something invisible. But when something breaks, you need to visualize it fast.

Start With a Current Network Diagram

I used to think network diagrams were just pretty pictures IT people drew to look professional. Then I had to troubleshoot a connectivity issue and realized I had no idea how our network was actually structured.

Here's what your network diagram actually needs:

Physical topology showing actual connections. Not what you think it looks like. What it actually looks like. Every switch, every router, every connection.

IP address ranges and subnets. Label everything. When you're tracking down an IP conflict, you don't want to guess which subnet a device is on.

VLANs and their purposes. "VLAN 10" means nothing. "VLAN 10 - Guest WiFi" tells me exactly what it's for and whether I should care about it.

Critical dependencies. What depends on what? If this switch goes down, what else breaks?

Document Your Network Like This

I keep our network documentation in layers. High-level overview for quick reference. Detailed configs for deep troubleshooting.

Layer 1: The 30-second version. A simple diagram showing main components and how they connect. Anyone should be able to look at this and understand the basic structure.

Layer 2: The detailed map. Every device. Every connection. Every VLAN. IP ranges. This is what you reference when troubleshooting.

Layer 3: The configuration files. Actual configs for routers, switches, firewalls. Backed up and version-controlled. Because "I think the setting was..." is not a recovery strategy.

I learned this the hard way when trying to reconfigure a router and realizing I had no backup of the previous settings. Pro tip: you only make that mistake once.

Keep It Current (This Is the Hard Part)

Here's what finally worked for me: I made updating documentation part of the change process.

Before any network change, I open the documentation. After the change, I update it. No exceptions.

It sounds simple, but it requires discipline. The temptation to "just make a quick change" without documenting it is strong. But that's how documentation dies—one undocumented change at a time.

If you're documenting processes for your team, make updating network docs part of your standard operating procedure.

System Configuration Documentation: Your Future Self Will Thank You

System configurations are another invisible thing that become incredibly visible when they break.

Document the "Why" Not Just the "What"

This is where most system documentation fails. It tells you what settings are configured but not why they're configured that way.

I once inherited a server with dozens of custom configurations. Half of them seemed important. The other half seemed random. No documentation explained why any of it existed.

Turned out some were critical security hardening. Others were failed experiments from 2019 that nobody removed.

Here's what I document now:

The configuration setting itself. Obviously. But also the exact location, the exact value, and how to change it.

Why this setting exists. "Set max connections to 1000 because we hit the default limit of 100 during Black Friday 2024 and the site went down."

What happens if you change it. "Decreasing this will improve memory usage but may cause connection refused errors during traffic spikes."

When it was last changed. Date and person. So when something weird happens, I can see what changed recently.

Create a Configuration Baseline

For every critical system, I maintain a baseline configuration document that answers these questions:

• What is this system and what does it do?
• What are the critical configurations?
• What are the default settings vs our custom settings?
• What dependencies does it have?
• What depends on it?

This isn't exciting work. But it's the difference between restoring a system in 30 minutes vs 6 hours of trial and error.

Our knowledge base best practices guide has more on organizing this kind of technical knowledge.

Troubleshooting Guides: Documentation That Actually Helps in a Crisis

Troubleshooting guides are the most important IT documentation you'll create. They're also the easiest to screw up.

Write for Someone Who Is Panicking

I write troubleshooting guides assuming the reader is stressed, tired, and possibly new to the team. Because that's exactly who's going to use them.

Start with the symptoms, not the solution. "Server is responding slowly" not "How to optimize database queries." The person looking for help knows the symptom, not the solution.

Use a decision tree format. "Is the server responding at all? Yes → Check this. No → Check that." No paragraphs of theory. Just clear next steps.

Include the commands to run. Not "check the logs." Instead: "Run this command: tail -f /var/log/syslog and look for errors containing 'connection timeout'."

Add the expected output. Show what they should see if things are working normally. Show what they'll see if things are broken.

Structure Your Troubleshooting Docs Like This

Here's the template I use for every troubleshooting guide:

Symptom: What the problem looks like to users or monitoring.

Immediate actions: What to do right now to minimize damage or restore service.

Diagnosis steps: How to figure out what's actually wrong, in order of likelihood.

Resolution steps: How to fix it, with specific commands and expected outcomes.

Prevention: How to prevent this from happening again.

That last part is crucial. Every outage is an opportunity to improve your systems. Document the prevention step so you're not troubleshooting the same issue over and over.

Helpdesk Procedures: Making Support Consistent

Helpdesk procedures are tricky because you're documenting people processes, not just technical processes.

Create Procedures That Scale

When it was just me and two other people, helpdesk procedures were "Dave knows how to handle that." This stopped working around person number seven.

Here's what I document for every common helpdesk request:

How to identify the issue. What questions to ask. What information to gather. What never to assume.

Step-by-step resolution. Specific actions. Specific commands. Specific screenshots of what to click.

Escalation criteria. When to escalate. Who to escalate to. What information to include in the escalation.

Follow-up requirements. How to verify it's fixed. How to prevent it from happening again. What to document.

Make It Searchable by Problem Description

I organize helpdesk procedures by the exact phrases users use when they report problems.

Not "Password Reset Procedure." Instead: "User can't log in - password doesn't work."

Because when someone says "I can't log in," you want to type that exact phrase into your search and find the right procedure immediately.

This is part of creating good training documentation that helps your team handle requests consistently.

Security Protocol Documentation: Walking the Fine Line

Security documentation is weird because you need to document procedures without documenting secrets.

Document Process, Not Credentials

I learned this when I found a "Security Procedures" doc that literally included admin passwords. Cool security, everyone.

Here's what I document:

The process for accessing secure systems. "To access production database: 1) Get approval from security lead, 2) Request temporary credentials from 1Password vault, 3) Use MFA, 4) Access expires after 4 hours."

Where credentials are stored. "Production SSH keys are in the Engineering vault in 1Password." Not the actual keys. Just where to find them.

Security procedures and policies. Password requirements. Access review schedules. Incident response procedures.

Compliance requirements. What regulations apply. What auditors look for. How to demonstrate compliance.

Incident Response Playbooks Are Critical

I hope you never need an incident response playbook. But if you do need one, you really need one.

Our incident response documentation includes:

Who to notify and in what order. Legal, customers, PR, executives—all with contact info and templates.

What information to gather immediately. Logs, screenshots, timelines. Because memory gets fuzzy fast.

Communication templates. Pre-written messages for different scenarios. You don't want to wordsmith a customer notification email during an active breach.

Post-incident process. How to document what happened. How to prevent it from happening again. How to update procedures based on what you learned.

Creating effective compliance documentation that covers both security and regulatory requirements is essential for any IT team.

How to Keep IT Documentation Actually Updated

This is the real challenge. Creating documentation is easy. Keeping it current is hard.

Build Documentation Into Your Change Process

The only way I've found to keep documentation current is to make it non-optional.

Before making any infrastructure change:

1. Find the relevant documentation
2. Make the change
3. Update the documentation
4. Mark the update with a date and your name

I use a simple template: "Last updated: 2026-12-19 by Yuval - Added new firewall rule for external API."

Use Version Control for Technical Docs

All our technical documentation lives in Git. Not because we're fancy. Because it gives us:

Change history. Who changed what and when. Why they changed it (if they wrote a decent commit message).

Rollback capability. Reverted a system change? Revert the documentation to match.

Review process. Pull requests for documentation changes. A second pair of eyes catching errors.

It's overkill for some documentation. But for critical IT docs, it's worth it.

Regular Documentation Audits

Once a quarter, I review all IT documentation and ask:

• Is this still accurate?
• Is this still relevant?
• Is this still findable?

I delete outdated docs ruthlessly. Better to have no documentation than wrong documentation. At least with no documentation, people know to ask. Wrong documentation just breaks things confidently.

The audit process for keeping docs current is just as important as creating them in the first place.

The Documentation That Saves You in Emergencies

The real test of IT documentation isn't whether it looks good. It's whether it helps when everything is on fire.

I think about the 2 AM server outage. The panicked team member. The critical system down.

Good IT documentation means the difference between "we're screwed until Dave lands in Thailand" and "okay, here's the troubleshooting guide, let's fix this."

It means new team members can handle tier-1 issues without escalating everything. It means security procedures actually get followed. It means you can recover from disasters instead of just watching them happen.

Document your network topology. Your system configurations. Your troubleshooting procedures. Your helpdesk processes. Your security protocols.

Write it for someone who's stressed, new to the team, or both. Make it searchable. Keep it current. Test it before you need it.

Because the best time to create IT documentation is before you desperately need it.

And with tools like Glitter AI, creating comprehensive IT documentation doesn't have to take weeks. Record your screen while you configure a system or troubleshoot an issue. AI generates the documentation automatically. Update it when things change.

Your 2 AM self will thank you.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should be included in IT documentation?

IT documentation should include network diagrams with IP ranges and VLANs, system configuration details with the reasoning behind settings, step-by-step troubleshooting guides for common issues, helpdesk procedures for support requests, security protocols for access and incident response, and disaster recovery procedures. The key is documenting not just what is configured, but why it's configured that way.

How do you keep IT documentation up to date?

Make documentation updates part of your change management process. Before any system change, review the documentation. After making the change, update the docs with the date and your name. Use version control like Git to track changes. Schedule quarterly documentation audits to verify accuracy. The key is making updates non-optional, not something you'll do later.

What is the best format for network documentation?

Use layered network documentation: a high-level diagram for quick reference showing main components and connections, a detailed map with every device, VLAN, and IP range for troubleshooting, and configuration files backed up and version-controlled. Include both visual diagrams and text descriptions, as screenshots become outdated but diagrams and structured text stay relevant.

How detailed should troubleshooting guides be?

Troubleshooting guides should be extremely detailed. Start with the symptom users experience, provide immediate actions to minimize damage, include exact commands to run with expected output, use decision tree format for diagnosis steps, and explain how to prevent the issue from recurring. Write assuming the reader is stressed and new to the team.

Should security credentials be included in documentation?

No, never include actual credentials in documentation. Instead, document the process for accessing secure systems and where credentials are stored securely (like in a password manager). Document security procedures, policies, and compliance requirements, but keep the actual passwords, keys, and tokens in secure vaults with proper access controls.

How do you organize IT documentation for easy search?

Organize documentation using the exact phrases people use when searching. Use task-based titles like "User can't log in - password doesn't work" instead of generic titles like "Password Reset Procedure." Store everything in one searchable location rather than scattered across multiple tools. Tag documents with multiple relevant terms to create multiple paths to the same information.

What is the difference between IT documentation and standard SOPs?

IT documentation focuses on technical systems, configurations, and infrastructure, while standard SOPs document business processes and workflows. IT docs include network diagrams, system configs, and security protocols that require technical knowledge. However, helpdesk procedures and some IT processes benefit from the same clear, step-by-step format used in standard operating procedures.

How can I make IT documentation more accessible to non-technical staff?

Write for someone with minimal technical knowledge. Define acronyms and technical terms. Use decision trees and clear next steps instead of paragraphs of explanation. Include screenshots or diagrams where helpful. Start troubleshooting guides with symptoms users can observe, not technical root causes. Structure helpdesk procedures with exact questions to ask and specific actions to take.