The Holy Wars -- LAME!

[Andrew Plato <aplato -at- EASYSTREET -dot- COM>]

You know, I am getting a little tired of the tech writer holy wars.  I have
one that just started at a client's site.   It is a Word/Frame war and it is
really pathetic. Both are good tools -- but to stake your entire career
around one tool.  Sheesh, how lame can you be?

At this client site, they decided to standardize to Word.  All of the
engineers, marketing people, etc. used Word for all the internal docs so it
seemed natural to do everything in Word.  Since they produce pretty simple
documentation and help files, I thought it was a good idea and started
helping them design some templates and such. Word is a pretty good tool.
Frame is too.  Both have their strengths and weaknesses.  For this company,
Word seemed like a good choice.  They were not doing really large documents
and needed portability between other departments (which know nothing about
Frame).

Then this one lazy, worthless jerk who works there got his panties in an
enormous bunch because he will ONLY use Frame.  You can imagine what
happened next.  The sides squared off and here I was, the lone consultant
stuck in the middle while these morons spent countless afternoons debating
and NOT WORKING.

So I went to the upper management and, in my best consulting voice, told
them they had a full scale insurrection happening with the tech pubs
department.  Naturally, the big guys asked for my opinion.

I told them to lay down the law and make it final: that the company had made
a business decision to standardize to one tool and one platform.  I told
them that this decision was made on both technological and economic factors.
That the inconvenience of converting to a single tool was minor in
comparison to the benefits.  I also warned them that the Fundie-Framers
would seethe and they would probably rebel with bad productivity.

Then I gave my regular line about technology holy wars:  holy wars are
destructive to an organization.  They cause people to waste time on useless
debating and arguing. Moreover, a holy warn can divide a team and cause
miscommunication and resentment.  This leads to bad products and lost
profits.  My suggestion was to deal with the instigators very sternly.  The
company must make it clear that the personal opinions regarding technology,
however well supported, are to be kept personal once a decision is made.
That personal preferences about technology and tools will be met when
appropriate, but the first priority was producing good documents and good
products.  I also suggested that they keep the most vocal opponents in
positions where they have little authority.

The company seems to be following what I suggested. They had a long talk
with that one guy who was driving me nuts.  I think they sort of laid it on
the line with him -- either play ball or strike out.  Ha has kind of quieted
down ever since the talk.

 Sheesh, when is this dipstick going to learn that tools do not produce good
documentation -- good writers do.  A good writer can produce useful
documents with any tool.

Well, what do you think?  Did I do the right thing by telling the mangers to
crush the holy war people?  I feel kind of icky about being the guy who told
them to reprimand these people.  I feel like a nark.

But, I also think that the holy war crap is really, really lame.  Come on,
are we professionals or are we cult members?

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Andrew Plato
Owner / Principal Consultant
Anitian Technology Services
www.anitian.com
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