how best to divide and conquer an activity

Subject: how best to divide and conquer an activity
From: "Kelly M. Kremin" <kellymkremin -at- msn -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 03 Aug 2005 09:22:33 -0500


I'm not sure how many procedures I should set up for one activity -- how to set up yadda -- where these variables are in play and impact what steps a user must take:

- Non-academic
- Academic
- One yadda
- Multiple yaddas

Additionally, there are potential off-shoot tasks:

- Search for X (academic)
- Search for Y (academic and non-academic)

If I keep it all together, then I force users to slog thru many if-then statements and I can't avoid jumping them over hunks of the procedure multiple times in one long procedure.

The alternative is to have 4 variations of the same procedure in the manual:

- single academic
- single non-academic
- multiple academic
- multiple non-academic

That's 4 shorter procedures with if-then instructions only for the two potential search tasks. I can't think of any other good alternatives to dividing and conquering. Was wondering if anyone had been in a situation like this before. What did you do?

Thanks,

Kelly



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References:
References (was: Why discuss certification?): From: Lisa M. Bronson

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