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Subject:Re: The Worst Thing About Contracting From:Eric Ray <ejr -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM> Date:Fri, 23 Apr 1999 07:28:10 -0600
At 04:58 PM 4/21/99 PDT, Anthony Markatos wrote:
>When documenting complex buisness systems: No play politics, no get
>essential procedures. No get essential procedure, no can create task
>oriented documentation.
Nope. You might have to acknowledge issues, and should certainly
be AWARE of who is walking on whose turf, but you'll get far better
results by simply addressing the users' needs and making it clear to
your information sources what you're doing. Speaking
from an ...er ... educational ...project from my past, ...
The IS department was implementing a new internal Customer
Service system without input from the Customer Service
group, and I was one of the writers assigned (belatedly)
to get information from the CS group needed to write the training
and doc materials. It was completely a hostile and potentially
uncooperative environment--it trumped the old saw about
"I'm from the IRS and I'm here to help." However, by
bending over backwards to accommodate the CS groups' needs
and carefully addressing issues in the context of "what do
you do now? How could this be improved? What additional
needs do you have?" and couching the task instructions in
the new docs for the new system in the context of actual
and perceived user needs, it was a remarkably successful
implementation, all things considered.
If you're advocating "playing politics", you might as well
advocate insincerity and playing games. On the other
hand, if you're straightforward, honest, and user-focused,
you'll usually get exactly what you need, and without getting
sucked into politics or compromising principles. This,
of course, applies both to contractors and employees.
Eric
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Eric J. Ray RayComm, Inc. http://www.raycomm.com/ ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com
*Award-winning author of several popular computer books
*Syndicated columnist: Rays on Computing
*Technology Department Editor, _Technical Communication_
