When you're a modern software company, there's a tendency to store information across a lot of different tools. But when knowledge is distributed across all of these different tools, it is much harder to find and use reliably.

For the systems engineering team at hotel booking platform Rocketmiles, ad hoc documentation was starting to cause unnecessary bottlenecks. Site Reliability Engineer Rishi Goomar recognized that to scale their team effectively, they would not only need to boost engagement with their current documentation but make it easier and more efficient to record new information.

“Before Slab, our documentation strategy was very ad hoc. We were using GitHub Wiki, Google Drive, and a custom-built program to publish Markdown files.”

With Slab, Rocketmiles built a more organized documentation strategy—keeping team members in tune with high-level information and ensuring every documentation was kept up-to-date.

This is important for a team that routinely performs internal support rotations as they need to quickly share information across departments to ensure that internal processes continue to run smoothly.

The ability to consolidate information that was previously only available across multiple different platforms kept the whole Rocketmiles team more in sync, while at the same time boosting engagement. A single documentation platform in Slab made it easy to share information effectively.

Being able to consolidate a number of tools also gave the Rocketmiles team an opportunity to reevaluate their internal processes, leading to efficiency gains across the board.

Goomar says, “We had two problems with our existing strategy—searchability was very difficult and very few people knew where the specific documents they needed actually lived. Slab helped us get rid of two redundant processes and made it easy for anyone on the team to find the information they needed.”

With a new, systemized documentation strategy in place, information was more accessible and shareable and therefore more valuable. Product owners could easily create context around user stories and update Goomar's team without necessarily interrupting their workflows, bringing the team together behind a shared vision.

As a distributed team, this shared knowledge and vision are very important.

“We're a distributed company and being able to search for documentation using Slab makes those documents easier to reference and share.”

Each member of the team could easily find the information they needed to perform specific tasks and update them as required. This led to more knowledgeable and engaged employees who understood and followed best practices not only for documentation but development and product planning as well.

By moving from their ad hoc documentation solution to a more cohesive strategy in Slab, Goomar ensured that his team would be able to support their colleagues consistently and efficiently. And that led to more qualified and knowledgeable employees across the board.

Transitioning to a new platform increased engagement

Getting buy-in for a new tool isn't easy—people tend to default to processes and platforms they already know and scoff at the idea of change. By simplifying the structure of their existing documentation in Slab, Rocketmiles boosted engagement with their documentation.

Having a single source to store process documents, runbooks, and how-to's also helped Rocketmiles standardize and codify their internal process.

This more cohesive strategy made it easy for their team to adopt and follow new processes. Each member of the team could easily find the documentation they needed to perform specific tasks and update them as required, which kept information more relevant and up-to-date.

Rocketmiles' move to Slab was the catalyst that streamlined their team's focus on documentation and company best practices by making it easier to engage with institutional knowledge.

Fast access to information made documentation ever-present

An internal wiki is only useful if it's easy to find the right document quickly. Rocketmiles' ad hoc documentation strategy made it difficult for their team to find information, which decreased engagement and hindered the effective sharing of knowledge.

Democratizing their documentation with Slab cut down the time it took to find an answer, which helped boost document visibility as well as team efficiency.

“I've never used a documentation platform that was this fast,” says Goomar. “When we started with Slab, I assumed that search would slow down as we created more documents but that hasn't been the case.”

Making documentation more accessible gave rise to faster team collaboration and ensured that every employee could gain insight from their peers. Their previous ad hoc strategy would have buckled without this consolidation.

Integrated ecosystems encourage more efficient knowledge sharing

Rocketmiles needed a better way to integrate their documentation with the team's current workflows. Connecting Slab to their existing Google Drive and GitHub wiki, as well as Jira and Slack, made it easy to find and share the right information across every team member.

Using Slab without changing additional processes also made adoption of the tool much easier. Answers could quickly be found in a single location instead of having to search a more disparate set of tools.This boosted the efficiency of their team and helped deprecate two redundant tools.

With simplified internal processes, Rocketmiles was able to give back valuable time to the whole team.

Consolidating the number of tools used to document and share processes makes it easy for the team to adopt and engage with a growing company wiki.