Hey Reader,
Last week I talked about how excited I am to start sharing what I've learned from 11+ years of using Jira and Confluence.
This week, I want to be real with you about something:
Documentation only works if your team actually uses it.
Plain and simple. But, that's the hard part and it's where most systems fall apart.
I've rebuilt more documentation systems than I care to admit.
Not because I wanted to- but because nobody followed the one we already had.
This week's article is about breaking that cycle. If you're the team lead stuck cleaning up after everyone else... you're not alone.
Let's talk about what actually works 😁
📣Spotlight Story
5 Proven Tactics to Drive Your Team into Confluence
Your Confluence system won’t work if your team ignores it. This post covers 5 practical tactics that actually shift behavior - no motivational posters or begging required.
💡Weekly Pro Tip
Link Embeds are a feature in Confluence that helps you provide context from another source without having to copy that information to your page. It's pretty neat! Check this out:
In your Confluence page, type /link and then select "Link" (You can also use ALT + K to insert a link)
Confluence does natively support linking to other Confluence pages or Jira Issues. By default, when you select another Confluence page, it shows a preview of the page, but you can select "Embed" in the link options:
After you click Embed, it shows the actual page:
Now, anytime you update that page, it will automatically update on the page you've embedded it in.
You can also embed Jira Issues:
Here's the crazy part- You can actually update the Jira issue in this embedded view.
...and Last, you can even add previews to external content. Here's a link to one of my posts about driving your team to Confluence:
❓Question of the Week
Question: Why does everyone hate updating documentation?
Short answer? Because no one's made it their problem.
Without clear ownership, updating documentation always feels optional. Optional work quickly dies and never gets completed.
A quick solution is to make documentation updates part of the definition of "Done" for any given effort. ('Done' is your team's checklist for when work is truly complete.)
If the last step is always "Update/Create documentation in Confluence," and you can't mark the item done until that is completed, then you're going to find documentation being part of the every day routine instead of a cringe task done last minute on the fly.
Do you have a question you want answered? Reply to this e-mail and I'll give you my own personal answer!
🔜Sneak Peek
Coming soon: Your Quarterly Cleanup Checklist for Confluence
You shouldn’t have to wonder if your docs are outdated. Next week’s post will give you a checklist to keep things clean - without spending all day reorganizing pages. Stay tuned.
Finally aligned,
Josh
