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Subject:What? My first outline wasn't perfect? From:kate -at- kathleen -dot- net To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 5 Apr 2002 12:24:56
Have you ever gotten through a first draft of a document and realized, hey
wait, all the important stuff is now buried five levels deep and the user
won't care about the stuff in the chapter heads?
Well, I just had that experience.
I don't feel so stupid, actually, considering this is only day five on my
new
contract and I already feel familiar enough with the system to be able to
recognize this on my own. It even went through a review already and the
reviewer, a user advocate herself, didn't catch the problem. But it's
pretty
frustrating nonetheless because I went into the outline and first draft
trying to keep the user needs in mind, of course.
What bugs me, as I play with rearranging the sections in Word, is that the
whole thing may end up right back the way it started when it goes through
the
next review pass. The new structure, after all, doesn't follow a logical
engineering flow, from largest logical unit to smallest. And I have a
sneaking suspicion the VP of Engineering, whose word appears to be final
here, will want it to be "logical."
I realize that my description of the situation is a bit vague, but does
anyone have any thoughts on how to compromise in print between documenting
functions/features and following user tasks?
Blah. My day started out so well.
Thanks in advance,
- Kate O'
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