RE: does quality matter? should it?

["Roberts, Dan x36117" <Dan -dot- Roberts -at- broadridge -dot- com>]

Well, first, what does this Chief Engineer and Bottlewasher consider
"quality doc" to be? Once CE/BW sets down his expectations, you have no
target to aim for, in determining if/when your doc is quality. 

Once CE/BW does set down guidelines, then you come back to that
Time-Resource-Quality-Quantity equation, and to the definition of 'quality'.

* Is a quality doc comprised of finely-honed language, the ultimate of
user-friendly technigues, and using the most cutting-edge of media
presentations? Is quality doc going to make me dance around my cube,
shouting "yes, yes, a thousand times, yes!" (ala the teacher from A
Christmas Story)?
* Is a quality doc comprised of enough information to let the user do what
he/she needs to do, without unduly confusing the user, and without guiding
the user to destroy 5 years of data or to launch Soviet missles? Does that
mean that the online doc is going to (for the most part) have to be a dump
of the printed material?

Given your limited resource, limited time, and high demands, you might have
to settle for producing something "as good as it gets" and possibly using
any free-time (what's that?) to gradually improve the docs to where you're
happy with them. 

Or another idea is to not throw the baby with the bathwater - don't approach
quality doc as an all-or-nothing idea. Can you produce one fabulous doc
(maybe the one that most of your users will need) and leave the others as
only "ok"? Can you pare down your doc offerings, to give you the wiggle room
to make a quality doc - maybe produce an awesome Getting Started guide, and
routine Reference material? Or a Getting Started and a help system? 

I guess what I'm getting around to suggesting is that Quality isn't a
zero-sum game (is that the phrase I want) and is certainly not an absolute,
by any means. Pick your own quality battles, and bypass the others. 

Dan Roberts
Dan -dot- Roberts -at- broadridge -dot- com (new!)
212 973-6117, or x36117


-----Original Message-----
From: Fiona Krycek [mailto:fiona -dot- krycek -at- gmail -dot- com] 
Sent: Monday, May 14, 2007 11:13 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: does quality matter? should it?


hi there,

I'm wondering if anyone has an opinion on the following:

I feel like even if I put in a lot of extra hours, my work is never going to
be as good as I want it to be because the demands are simply too great. For
a while, I dealt with this by working 60- to 80-hour weeks, then I reverted
to more normal hours and just sort of resigned myself to the fact that I'm
not going to be producing the best work of my life. My co-workers' feeling
is that this is all OK, since documentation is only a "frill" for most
software companies, and we shouldn't be emotionally invested in what we're
doing anyway. Both my co-workers put in 40-hour weeks and don't seem too
concerned about the fact that, overall, our doc quality is going down, not
up.

So, my question is, do other people think that documentation is only a
frill? If you were (or are) working at a company that doesn't take
documentation very seriously, should this/does this bother you? If it
doesn't bother you, would you be bothered by the contradictory messages
coming out of senior management (contradictory because senior management
says documentation is important, but does not support this through hiring or
planning)? Can you suggest any strategies for managing this situation?

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