RE: altering delivered documentation

Subject: RE: altering delivered documentation
From: "Brierley, Sean" <Sean -at- Quodata -dot- Com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 13:31:28 -0400

If you are delivering documentation that you intend to let the recipient
edit, and if your current copyright prohibits that, then you *have* to
change the copyright statement.

I loath to deliver documentation to a customer with the intent of letting a
customer modify it . . . except for translation, etc., but the translation
company is really *not* the customer (despite what your QA program said). I
design my document templates to enhance readability and set them up using a
specific subset of the English language to make them more readable. Does a
customer really bring those skills or documentation experience to the table?
Furthermore, what if the customer mistakenly changes something that is
factual to something that is incorrect. My point is that the giving the
customer these kinds of control can reduce the effectiveness of your
communication in a variety of ways.

My thoughts are that you have some options:

1) Write the documentation sets with the view that the customer *is* going
to edit them. If your deliverable targets an audience that will be modifying
the deliverable, PDF is probably not the best way to go. You will need to
revise your workflow and deliverables to provide native application files
(in this case FrameMaker). Be prepared to support your customers use of
FrameMaker, or whatever tool, because it will happen. Plan for such support
and you will not be caught napping.


2) Write documentation that is customized for each different delivery. Does
this really entail more work than supporting the use of your application
tool at the customer site?

3) Write documentation that effectively, and in an application-neutral way,
discusses the hows and whys of customizing your product. Distribute this doc
set to all customers regardless of what they intend to do with your product.
Encourage your customer to document whatever they want, on their own, using
a toolset and skillset of their own choosing, and not constrained to the
workflow you use. Thus, you might deliver a base PDf document. Customer 1
might use FrameMaker to document what they do with the product, customer 2
might use MS Word, and Customer 3 might use a book of matches and a number 2
pencil.

Often, I see option 3) used. For example, where I work we have a network
that uses Win 2000 on Alphas and Wintels. Our installation of Windows 2000
and Office 2000 is customized by our IT guys to meet our site's perceived
needs. However, when documenting the network setups, Win2K customizations,
and Office2k setups, our IT guys do not modify existing Microsoft doc sets.
Instead, they document their modifications in their own way and workflow,
using MS Word in some cases, pen and paper in others, and storing them as
they see fit.


Cheers,

Sean


________________________________________________

Sean Brierley
Lead Technical Writer

Jenzabar, Inc.
One Union Place
Hartford, CT 06103
www.jenzabar.com
tel: 860-728-6777 x211
fax: 860-247-0249
sean -at- quodata -dot- com

Adobe® Certified Expert
Quadralay WebWorks® Wizard


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Snyder Heater, Regina [SMTP:RHeater -at- mtwcorp -dot- com]
> Customers will be given printed
> documentation, as well as the same documentation "online" in PDF format.
> It
> has been suggested by one of our managers that once the documentation is
> delivered, they will need to be able to alter it as necessary. Our
> documentation is copyrighted material, so I'm a little confused.
>
> In any case, I'm more curious as to if this is the "norm" when delivering
> documentation. Do you usually just hand it off to the customer and be
> done
> with it? Our system includes implementation/customization and maintenance
> contracts. In other words, we customize the application for each customer
> as needed -- and to this point, my team assumed we'd be customizing the
> documentation for the customers, as well.

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