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We were asked by management to determine
what changes are needed in the delivery and
content of our documentation. As a small
group of 5 TW's, we talked amongst ourselves
as to how we used and accessed documentation.
Within that small sample were the full range
of answers. They ranged from those who only
used hardcopies, and myself, who has no hard
copy books in my cube at all. We work for a
very large tech company.
We suspect management is trying to justify
eliminating hard copy books. We, being smarter
than managers (we think!), have anticipated
this management bias. We have created a survey
and are going to ask our customers for their
thoughts on documentation. We then will have
some data to utilize to make decisions.
Since the survey is being done online only,
we know there is a bit of bias in the sample
due to how the survey is accessed, but even as
TW's we span the range, we expect the online
users will also be diverse. The survey won't
be starting until May, so we won't know the
results for awhile after that. This project
is being done in our spare time = no budget.
It will be interesting to see what our
customers think of our documents.
It will be interesting to see what our
customers think of our documents.
Since the originator of this thread has a
small population of users, I think it would
be worth the effort to contact a few users
and ask them directly how they want to use
the docs. A couple of hours of phone calls
might be worth their weight in gold.
(hmm . . . how do you weigh a phone call?)
CB
-----------------------------------------
Three of us can't do anything, but
any two of us could do anything, if
any one of us put their mind to it.
David Waters 1999
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