Documentation and Knowledge Transfer

The Forgetting Problem#

Because the entire student body turns over within four years, undocumented knowledge is lost knowledge. The team that re-learns wiring, sponsorship outreach, and competition logistics from scratch every year never improves. Documentation is the antidote and the single highest-leverage sustainability practice a business sub-team can drive.

What to Document#

• A team handbook — structure, roles, expectations, policies, and onboarding. Teams like Paly Robotics and FRC 167 publish full handbooks worth modeling.
• Process docs / wiki — how to do recurring jobs: how to apply for grants, how to set up the pit, how to run scouting, how to redeem FIRST Choice.
• Engineering/design documentation — design decisions, CAD, calculations, and lessons learned per sub-system.
• Financial records — budgets, ledgers, sponsor agreements (see the finance module).
• Contact lists — sponsors, vendors, alumni, and partner teams.

Tools for Documentation#

• Shared cloud storage — Google Drive or similar, with a clear, consistent folder structure that survives leadership changes.
• A team website or wiki — public-facing docs double as outreach and as Published Resources for the Impact Award.
• GitHub — for code and software documentation.
• A physical and/or digital team portfolio/binder — useful at events for judges to review.

Make Documentation a Habit, Not an Event#

Teams fail at documentation when they treat it as a one-time end-of-season chore. Instead:

• Document as you go (a quick build-blog post, a photo, a note in the wiki).
• Make handoff documents a requirement for graduating leads — each writes how to do their job before they leave.
• Hold an off-season documentation review to fill gaps before they are forgotten.

Documentation as Outreach#

The FIRST Impact Award defines Published Resources as resources a team creates to help others and publishes publicly (on a website, social media, at a conference). Well-documented teams turn their internal knowledge into public guides that help other teams, and the reach of those resources is what counts toward the Impact Award. FRC 167's public documentation site is a strong example of internal docs that also serve the wider community.

The Payoff#

Good documentation compounds. Each year you start from where the last team left off instead of from zero, recruits onboard faster, knowledge survives graduations, and your award submissions write themselves because the evidence is already captured.