Who Owns the Documentation on a Small Team?

Here's how documentation dies on a small team: everyone agrees it's important, everyone assumes someone else is doing it, and nobody is doing it. Shared responsibility for documentation means no responsibility.

The fix is almost embarrassingly simple: name one owner. Not a new hire, not a committee — one person whose job description includes keeping the AI records current. It might be five percent of their week. That's enough.

The owner's job isn't to write everything. It's to make sure everything gets written: nudge the engineer after a model update, log the vendor's new feature, file the incident note. They're the librarian, not the author of every book.

Pick someone detail-oriented who already touches the system — your operations lead, your office manager, whoever actually knows what's going on. Give them the authority to ask questions and a standing fifteen minutes on Friday.

Without an owner, documentation is a wish. With one, it's a system. Auditors can tell the difference in about thirty seconds: "Who keeps these records?" should have a name as the answer, not a silence.

I explain frameworks; I don't give legal counsel.