Re: Defining Your Tasks

Subject: Re: Defining Your Tasks
From: Anthony Markatos <tonymar -at- HOTMAIL -dot- COM>
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1998 14:30:58 PDT

Brett Thorson asks:

How do we as tech writers discover what the user wants to do with the
system, before they know what the system can do?

Tony Markatos responds:

In any organization, the essential tasks to be performed are mechanism
independent. That is, they need to be done irregardless of how they are
done (i.e., manually, automatically, semi-automatically). This is a
fundamental principle of systems analysis (and is just as applicable to
a technical writer performing a task analysis). We discover these
essential tasks basically by "getting into the user head" and
understanding the decisions he/she has to make to get work done

Now granted, there is going to be a lot of tasks that result
specifically from the mechanism choosen. (For example, the task "Create
E-Mail" is only applicable when we have E-Mail software). But do not
focus on these subsidiary tasks in your analysis. If you do, I will
gaurantee that you will miss the critical essential (technology
independent) tasks. Once you have ID the essential tasks, it then is OK
to focus on the technology dependet tasks.

Tony Markatos
(tonymar -at- hotmail -dot- com)

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