Why Dev Teams Need to Document Their Tech Stack

Over the course of my engineering career, I've worked on many codebases and watched them evolve over years. The patterns I've observed have shaped my understanding of what makes software projects succeed or fail. In my first job, I was responsible for managing a portfolio of over 50 websites, and I continued to manage those sites for over 5 years. This experience gave me a unique perspective on how software systems grow, change, and sometimes deteriorate over time.

The Documentation Gap

What I noticed most was how often services and features get added to a site without ever tracing the decision making, owner of the service, or purpose of the service. A new tracking script gets added, a third-party service gets integrated, or a script gets written to solve an immediate problem. Six months later, nobody knows why it exists.

This isn't just about forgetting - it's about the natural evolution of software teams. People leave, new team members join, priorities shift, and suddenly you have a codebase full of "mystery services" that everyone is afraid to touch.

The Cost of Poor Documentation

I've seen this pattern play out countless times:

• A critical service goes down, but no one knows who owns it
• A new developer wants to refactor code but can't understand why certain decisions were made
• A feature request comes in, but the team can't determine if it already exists somewhere
• Technical debt accumulates because no one wants to risk breaking undocumented systems

The result? Large amounts of technical debt that compound over time, making every future change more expensive and risky.

The StackTracer Solution

This is exactly why I built StackTracer. After years of watching teams struggle with undocumented infrastructure, I wanted to create a tool that makes documentation a natural part of the development workflow.

StackTracer helps teams:

• Track service ownership - Know who's responsible for each component
• Document decision rationale - Understand why certain choices were made
• Save important resources - Keep track of service dashboards and other critical links
• Maintain institutional knowledge - Preserve context even as team members change

Making Documentation Sustainable

The key insight from my experience is that documentation needs to be:

1. Easy to maintain - If it's too hard, it won't happen
2. Integrated into workflows - Documentation should happen alongside development
3. Collaborative - Multiple team members should be able to contribute
4. Searchable - Information needs to be findable when you need it

The Bottom Line

Every undocumented service is a future problem waiting to happen. The cost of poor documentation isn't just the time spent trying to understand old code—it's the opportunities lost, the bugs introduced, and the confidence eroded when teams can't trust their own systems.

As someone who has managed dozens of websites and seen how they evolve over years, I can tell you that the teams who document their decisions early and often are the ones who maintain velocity and avoid the technical debt spiral.

The question isn't whether you can afford to document—it's whether you can afford not to.

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Kevin Kane is the founder of StackTracer, a platform designed to help development teams track and document their infrastructure. With many years of experience managing large portfolios of websites, he's passionate about helping teams maintain clarity and control over their technical stack.