Knowledge Transfer videos are not documentation
Knowledge Transfer, in an organisation, is a practice of sharing knowledge, processes, tools and information between employees and providing an inputs to problem solving. In the "ancient" times before the remote work, knowledge transfer had various forms: like showing how some new tools can be applied to your existing business process, chat about the ideas people from you team have, etc.
In many organisations Knowledge Transfer, sadly, replaces the documentation. And the worst kind of it are the "Knowledge Transfer" vide calls to show how something works. In mamy cases such calls are recorded, so others can get the knowledge later.
We all know how all the calls are. People are late, there are constant background noises, hardware issues, glitches, people who apparently are too lazy to even turn off their microphone we others don't have hear they yawing or farts.
In my experience, such calls are arranged ad hoc, so host is not prepared for what he was to show, the information is not well organised, drawings are done fast and inaccurate in MS Paint of notepad, people are interfering to each other so the information spoken is not clear. Even the recording is messed up, because someone didn't take time to change the layout to hide the attendants list that takes 1/3 of the screen.
The whole idea of thinking such video KT is a good way to replace training is wrong. If such video is recorded for later use, how it will be updated if something needs to be changed? Like some charts created ad-hoc during the call? Someone will record new version of the video?
Here are some reasons why KT video can't replace documentation:
- impossible to search
- hard or impossible to update
- require to rewrite things from the screen
- too long
- 60 minute video can be replaced by 20 minutes of read
- waiting for something to load or to be fixed
- full of "filled pauses" - all the "yyyy", "uhm", "eeeee" sounds
Apart of all that, they are big in size. 1 hour long video, depending on the technology, can be from 0.3GB to 1GB. The same information as Markdown file with some drawings will take 10MB. This is connected with the amount of CO2 produced on storing and transferring such amount of useless data.
A Carnegie Mellon University study concluded that the energy cost of data transfer and storage is about 7 kWh per gigabyte. An assessment at a conference of the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy reached a lower number: 3.1 kWh per gigabyte.
I am not against Knowledge Transfer in any form. I have done some myself to show some concepts I've been working on to get some ideas and feedback from other team members. This was a good way to discuss some issues and improvements, get feedback. But in any circumstances such KT video can't replace the training or documentation. Documentation is only written, never spoken.
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