What documentation should a deployment leave behind?
Enough for a stranger to maintain it in two years without you. Four documents: the register, the specification, the process and the decisions. The register is the one that matters most, and the decisions are the one that never gets written.
The register
Which tag is where, what it holds, when it was fitted, and when it was replaced.
This is the deliverable. Tags are consumables and the register is the asset, and it must be exportable in a form readable without the software that produced it.
Without it, replacing a tag means guessing, retiring a location means guessing, and an audit is impossible.
Keep it somewhere that outlives the project, which usually means not in a spreadsheet on one person's machine.
The specification
The chip reference and the NFC Forum tag type. The substrate and the adhesive. The supplier and the batch.
Enough that somebody can order the same thing again, and enough to recognise when a delivery is not the same thing.
Include the mounting method and the surface, since a replacement fitted differently will fail differently.
And include the reason for anything unusual, such as why an on metal tag was chosen for a surface that looks like wood.
The process
How a tag is written, verified, installed and recorded, in order, as steps somebody can follow.
What the verification consists of and what a pass looks like.
What to do with a tag that fails at each stage.
This is what lets the deployment grow without you, and its absence is why deployments stop growing when their author leaves.
The decisions and why
The one document nobody writes and the one that saves the most time later.
Why the tag holds a link rather than content. Why the address is on this domain. Why there is a printed fallback. Why the tags are not locked.
Each of those is a decision a successor will reverse if they do not know the reason, and each reversal is expensive.
A page of short entries is enough. It is the cheapest insurance in the project and it is written last, in a hurry, or not at all.
Frequently asked questions
What is the most important document?
The register of which tag is where and what it holds. Tags are consumables and the register is the asset.
Why document the decisions?
Because a successor who does not know why will reverse them, and each reversal costs more than writing the reason did.
Where should the register live?
Somewhere that outlives the project and exports to a readable format. Not a spreadsheet on one person's machine.
How long should this take?
A few pages. The value is in existing at all rather than in being thorough.