In praise of hype docs

Hype docs are something I’ve recommended others keep but in all honesty, have struggled to complete in my career thus far. I’ve always worked in small teams where there’s high visibility of achievements and challenges. But when I joined Motorway last year, I quickly realised that if I didn’t toot my own trumpet (or at least record the notes I played), they’d quickly get lost in the noise of a 500+ person organisation.

I kept a few scribbles last year but struggled to remember the impact I’d made when it came to writing my end of year self reflection. This year, however, I’ve been really intentional about keeping an accurate hype doc, full of facts, figures, notes and quotes.

The medium isn’t important. I chose Notion because we use it at work, but any doc/sheet would do. I had columns for “what”, “date”, “tags” and “values”. Our end of year review always asks how our achievements uphold the “values” of the company, so I wanted to make sure I had a clear record of that for each line item. The tricky bit is then filling it in.

The easiest route, I found, was the make it part of my ‘launch’ checklist. Merge the PR, release the application, test the change, inform the team, update the hype doc. Then, a few weeks after the feature has launched, take a few mins to capture some performance stats, and any feedback colleagues/customers have shared in relation to it. It’ll paint a clearer picture come the end of the year, and make it clear that you’re data-driven (companies ruddy love that).

“Hype” doesn’t always have to be positive. When things went wrong, I also noted it down, showing how I’d learned from my mistakes.

Come the end of the year, this document has been a godsend, and has made the end of year review a breeze to compile. It’s full of quotes and stats, which have been particularly useful in a year where I’ve not had an active manager aware of my impact. It’s also been really uplifting to see just how much my team achieved this year.

Sometimes you’ve gotta be your own cheerleader. 📣