Code that only one person understands is an operational risk.
Clear setup instructions, consistent structure, and documented assumptions make it possible for a team to maintain a system when its original author is unavailable. This matters for research code, data pipelines, and production services alike.
The most useful documentation is usually practical:
- a concise README with setup steps and expected outputs
- clear module and folder names
- comments for decisions that are not obvious from the code
- reproducible configuration and dependency management
- ownership and recovery information for shared systems
Documentation is not separate from delivery. It is part of making technical work dependable.