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> When asking for reviews, I sometimes tell a reluctant
> reviewer, "At least
> make sure I'm not lying to the user."
I say: "I just need to be sure we aren't telling TOO MANY lies."
Mostly, they recognize that it's being said tongue-in-cheek,
but they also get the point.
Usually, however, I'm not looking for reviews from
original SMEs. Most of my reviews are done by:
a) Product Verification group, who verify the accuracy
of the functinoal parts of the manuals against the
actual product and tasks/test-cases
b) "naive" users when we can find 'em.
This last cycle, one of my best "naive" users was the CEO.
He dove right in and was enthusiastically entering bug
reports into ClearQuest, as well as liberally marking up
my manuals. I knew the guy was a sharp business and
marketing person, but I'm now impressed with him on
another level, as well. Engineering Dept., on the other
hand, is a bit grumpy about all the stuff he pointed out
in the user interface and even some of his observations
on the overall function of the product.
I especially liked the parts where he took pains to
point out that the problem was *not* with the documentation,
but with the product...... ahem!..... blush..... :-)
/kevin
/kevin
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