Be more like a Swedish furniture company

The idea

IKEA has some great products. Perhaps though, their greatest asset, are the directions that are contained within their furniture boxes. IKEA directions are simple. They solve real world problems that exist between companies and their customers. The simple IKEA directions solve 3 real world problems.

1. They force simplier design
2. They do not create frustrated users
3. They generate less support calls

The idea is to make our documents between our customers and ourselves simplier and easier to understand. We have two documents. That's it. No more. Each document is just a collecton of bullet points. If you can't describe a point within a bullet, then it needs to be judo chopped down so that it can be explained in a simplier way.

The first document is our decisions document. It is a collection of bullet points that describe various decisions that occur throughout the project which cannot be integrated into the application at that given time. Once we act upon that decision by coding it into our application, we remove the decision point because it has turned into clutter. The software being built is the living documentation.

Our second document is our questions document. It is a collection of questions for various stakeholders. Once they are answered, the bullet points are moved from the questions document to the decisions document.

The documents are simple and our stakeholders actually read them.