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Subject:RE: How do I respond to this engineer.....?? From:"Mark Baker" <mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 31 Oct 2003 10:53:06 -0500
n51_w114 -at- hotmail -dot- com wrote
> How do i respond to this memo?.? How do i get all of them to understand
> that they need to begin creating a culture that views documentation as an
> investment worth protecting?? I am not specifically aware of ROI arguments
> to present as a push back to this mentality.
Your engineer's memo sounds eminently sensible to me. The thing that you
have to remember is that the purpose of document control systems is not to
control documents, it is to control people.
Documents don't need much in the way of control. Publish them on a web
server. If people are familiar with the documents they need, they will find
them. If they are less familiar, index the collection, and people will find
them.
People, on the other hand, may or may not need to be controlled. Is there a
danger of contention between different authors of a document? Is there a
danger of uncontrolled or unapproved changes being made to a document? (This
is a behavioral question, not a question of access.) Is there a necessity to
tack every change that is made? Is there a need to prevent certain people
from reading certain documents? These are all questions about controlling
people, not about controlling documents.
Processes are expensive and should not be implemented without cause. Figure
out if you have a real business need to control the actions of people on
documents. If you do, then justify your position in those terms, not in
terms of controlling documents.
---
Mark Baker
Stilo Corporation
1900 City Park Drive, Suite 504 , Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1J 1A3
Phone: 613-745-4242, Fax: 613-745-5560
Email mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com
Web: http://www.stilo.com
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