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RE: Having Your Style Guide and Eating Your Fries Too
Subject:RE: Having Your Style Guide and Eating Your Fries Too From:"McDonald, Guy A." <Guy -dot- A -dot- McDonald -at- usa -dot- conoco -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 5 Apr 2001 16:33:01 -0500
David Orr [mailto:dorr -at- ORRNET -dot- com] wrote ...
<snip>
W. Edwards Deming, the guy who taught Japan about quality manufacturing,
said that we all need to look at how we do things with an eye to continually
<passionate snip>
------------------------------
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRGH!!!!!!!!! Quoting Deming on this list makes me
want to slam my head into the keys!
For one - Deming's model failed in Japan because he did not understand the
cultural differences between his logic and the Japanese way of approaching
business.
Likewise - if you decide to take rapid iterative techniques and apply them
to the Nth degree with end-user documentation, you will fail.
It is hard enough to get them to actually read this stuff, much less expend
energy adapting to your latest and greatest information delivery method. Why
change for change's sake? Don't forget that we also are training/teaching
our users to read something.
Don't believe me? Go ahead and apply a Winnie the Pooh template across your
next Getting Started Guide.
Guy A. McDonald
Information Development Manager
Technical Information Architects, Inc.
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