Since I have the developer title, I have found writing things down to be very valuable.
From writing better code and better commit messages, to having more comprehensive written updates and documentation, there is a lot of value in writing down everything.
This is a change from being a designer, because as a designer writing things down is usually only made in the context of deliverables and presentations, but not as part of your everyday work. At least this has been my experience, maybe other designers have better work methodology.
I have committed myself to putting proposals in writing, particularly those related to user advocacy. Sometimes, when I observe some mistakes or things that can be improved, I always express it, although more often than not I do it informally in conversation.
This is a mistake because I can not track ideas if they are not documented, and also I am making a disservice to myself by not making written formal proposals, because as I already expressed numerous times I feel user advocacy is not usually taken very seriously, and I think I reinforce this idea when I make proposals as a remark in conversation instead of developing a formal proposal with documentation and examples and detailing the steps and benefits of doing so.
Recently, we have had some security issues in some of the projects I am working on, so we are taking action to prevent similar issues in the future. Fortunately, I had a written proposal of this when I first joined said projects about the steps we needed to take regarding security, so it is not only that I expressed my concerns in a document with a date on it, but also the fact that we already have an existing proposal to start working on.
On top of that, saying: “I wrote a proposal about this, maybe we can go over it” sounds less petty and more constructive than saying: “I told you so”.