IT Documentation Quality & Validation Checklist

The #GoodwinGetsIT IT Documentation Quality & Validation Checklist is a practical Word checklist designed to help IT teams answer one very important question:

Is this documentation actually usable?

Because a document existing in SharePoint doesn't automatically mean anyone can use it when something breaks at 2:00 AM.

This checklist provides a structured way to review runbooks, SOPs, architecture documents, system guides, recovery procedures, and other IT documentation before considering them complete.

Use it to evaluate documentation quality, identify operational gaps, verify recovery readiness, test whether another technician can successfully follow the instructions, and assign ownership for anything that still needs to be fixed.

Each criterion is scored from 0 to 2, making it easy to establish an overall documentation rating while still highlighting critical problems that require attention regardless of the final score.

The checklist includes:

Documentation Scoring - Rate each criterion as missing or unusable, partially complete, or complete and usable, then calculate an overall documentation quality score.

Findability & Ownership - Verify that the authoritative document can be located quickly and that primary, backup, business, and service ownership are clearly identified.

System Context - Confirm the documentation explains what the system does, why it matters, who depends on it, where it runs, and how critical it is to the organization.

Dependencies & Architecture - Review authentication, network, DNS, certificates, storage, databases, backups, monitoring, logging, integrations, and other upstream or downstream dependencies.

Operations - Validate routine procedures, maintenance activities, start and stop instructions, expected results, patching cadence, technical constraints, and known technical debt.

Troubleshooting - Make sure common symptoms have useful first checks, relevant logs and consoles are identified, likely causes and corrective actions are documented, and escalation criteria are clear.

Recovery & Continuity - Verify backup scope, retention, recovery steps, validation procedures, restore testing, and recovery-related vendor contacts.

Security & Access - Check administrative access paths, authentication requirements, privileged roles, service accounts, firewall restrictions, logging requirements, and secure credential references.

Independent Validation - Record whether someone other than the author has reviewed the documentation and successfully followed a critical procedure.

Critical Red Flags - Quickly identify documentation that contains secrets, references systems that no longer exist, includes vague restart instructions, has never been recovery-tested, lacks ownership, or otherwise creates significant operational risk.

Scream Test / Decommission Readiness - Review dependencies, recent usage evidence, owner communication, backups, rollback procedures, observation periods, and change approvals before deliberately disabling or retiring a questionable system or component.

Review Results & Corrective Actions - Record the final score, overall rating, critical gaps, responsible owner, due date, and next validation date.

The goal isn't for documentation to pass a paperwork exercise.

The goal is for another competent person to be able to find it, understand it, follow it, troubleshoot from it, and recover the system without needing the original author standing over their shoulder.

If the instructions say "restart the server" and the first question is "which server?"... congratulations, you just found a documentation gap. 😂