Historically, I’ve been horrible at documenting environments. For years, I’ve looked for automated ways to document them, and I’ve found tools that can capture most configured settings.

What I’ve failed to automate is useful documentation.
Documentation that explains why the environment looks the way it does.

Automatically generated documentation is valuable when you need an accurate inventory of current settings. The problem is that it rarely captures the context people are actually looking for:
What changed when something stopped working, or which decisions led to the current configuration?

Automation is good at capturing technical facts. People still need to document intent, decisions and context.

So, what have I learned?

I recently changed employers, which meant meeting a new group of colleagues. I’ve been fortunate to join a team with some great people.

They introduced me to a documentation method that I would like to share.

I will not lie.
The method takes manual effort and may feel tedious at first. Once established, however, it gives you a simple way to document decisions as the environment develops.

One of the biggest benefits becomes clear during a certification process. This approach gives you a direct mapping from each requirement to the design decisions and configurations used to address it. It will not replace the dialogue with the auditor or the need to present and explain the environment, but it provides a structured foundation for that conversation. Instead of reconstructing the reasoning under pressure, you can show where the requirement came from, how it was interpreted, and where it was implemented.

At its core, the method uses three layers.

Requirement > Design > Configuration

The documentation model

Requirements

• High-level demands from your organization or external entities
  • Examples include ISO standards, NIS2, CIS, internal security requirements, and user requests for everyday functionality.

For example, a requirement could state that all devices used to access company data must be enrolled in a unified endpoint management (UEM) system.

Design

• High-level decisions based on the requirements
• Specific to an operating system or platform
• Links requirements to configuration

Following the same example

Requirement: All devices used to access company data must be enrolled in a unified endpoint management (UEM) system.
Design: Microsoft Intune has been selected as the UEM platform.

Configuration

• The settings, options and configuration items in the system selected during the design stage
• Documents the settings in enough detail for a new colleague to understand what has been configured.

Completing the example

Requirement: All devices used to access company data must be enrolled in a unified endpoint management (UEM) system.
Design: Microsoft Intune has been selected as the UEM platform.
Configuration: The MDM authority in Microsoft Entra is set to Microsoft Intune.

How do you get started?

There are many ways to implement the model. My suggestion is to start simply with an Excel workbook. You can expand it later if the need and opportunity arise.

Start by documenting your requirements, then build the overview gradually as you work through the environment. Whenever you encounter a policy, document what it does and why it was created.

Over time, you will gain a clear overview of your environment, its settings and the reasoning behind them. More importantly, you will have a blueprint for onboarding new colleagues and explaining the environment to an auditor when needed.

I’ve built a beginner’s spreadsheet to get you started: paulycloud-public/documentation/Requirement Specification – Template.xlsx at main · spkm95/paulycloud-public

The spreadsheet will not automate the documentation process for you, and that is intentional.

By defining this process in your team, documentation becomes part of the work as changes are made, rather than a separate task when an auditor is knocking on your door.

Intro to the spreadsheet

The spreadsheet consists of three sheets, one for each layer: Requirements, Design, and Configuration.

RS = Requirement Specification

DS = Design Specification

CI = Configuration Items

Every entry has an ID, and the relationships are collected in the RS sheet. This creates a direct link between each requirement to the configurations that address it.

In the example below, I’ve documented a configuration profile to block access to cmd and regedit UX tools for end users.

Integrating the model with Change Management

One of the strengths of the model is that it integrates naturally with a change management process.

Most organizations already use a Change Advisory Board (CAB) or a similar process to review and approve significant changes. By referencing RS, DS or CI identifiers in change records, each approved change can be directly linked to the documentation that explains both the implementation and its purpose.

For example, imagine a change request to introduce a new Conditional Access policy:

• RS-Security-012: Multifactor authentication must be required for remote access.
• DS-ConditionalAccess-004: Microsoft Entra Conditional Access will be used to enforce authentication requirements.
• CI-CAPolicy-027: Conditional Access policy requiring MFA for cloud apps.

The CAB submission can reference these identifiers, creating a clear relationship between the business requirement, the design decision and the configuration being modified.

This approach provides several benefits:

• Changes can be traced back to the requirements that justified them.
• Reviewers can quickly understand the purpose of a proposed change.
• Auditors gain visibility into why a configuration exists and when it was introduced or modified.
• Teams can more easily assess the impact of future changes by identifying related requirements, designs and configurations.

Over time, the documentation becomes more than a snapshot of the environment. It evolves into a history of how the environment was developed and why specific decisions were made.

When a service stops working or a configuration behaves unexpectedly, the change record provides a starting point for investigation. By following the links between the CAB submission, RS, DS and CI entries, teams can identify what changed, why the change was approved and which requirements the implementation was intended to satisfy.

In this way, change management complements the documentation model. The documentation explains the current state of the environment, while change records explain how it arrived there.

Building on the simple model

The workbook is intentionally simple. Each sheet includes a Comments field that can capture additional context or a lightweight history of decisions and changes. Teams that outgrow the template can build on it with additional columns, supporting documents or integrations, but those additions should solve a real need rather than make the process harder to maintain.

The spreadsheet is intended as a starting point. As the environment grows, the same Requirement → Design → Configuration model can be moved into a centralized documentation platform such as SharePoint, a wiki, a documentation portal or a custom web application.

A centralized solution makes it easier for multiple contributors to maintain documentation, search across requirements and configurations, and link documentation to change management processes. It also enables traceability from a requirement to the design decisions, configuration items and change records associated with it.

The technology is less important than the process. Start with a spreadsheet, establish the documentation habit, and only introduce additional tooling when it solves a real problem. A simple model that is maintained consistently will always provide more value than an advanced system that is neglected.