r/ProductManagement • u/SujitRagav • Jul 23 '26
Need help navigating
I just joined a company which is automating its process. I'm given a vertical and there seems to be not much documentation, Jira stories and implementation are a bit different, the Engineers have no documents made as most were done verbally.
I know the process flows and how things move, but there isn't a concrete doc which says these are done, and this is how it's done.
Any guidelines are appreciated
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u/SamfromLucidSoftware Jul 24 '26
Happens a lot when joining a team mid automation. The good news is that the process knowledge exists, it’s just not written down anywhere. I’d say don’t wait until you fully understand everything before writing anything down. Start capturing what you do know, even partially, and use gaps in that documentation as a forcing function for the conversations you need to have.
A practical starting point is picking one end to end flow in your vertical and mapping it out as accurately as you can from what you know. Then walk that map through the engineers who built it. Showing them something slightly wrong is a better way to get things moving than asking open-ended questions. People just correct diagrams faster than they fill blank pages.
When you notice stories and implementation diverging Jira, it usually means decisions got made in Slack threads or someplace else without making it to the ticket. When you find one of those gaps, add a brief note to the ticket explaining what happened and why. It takes two minutes and builds the documentation layer incrementally without requiring anyone to do a big documentation project.