Advantages of Context Sensitive Help (to persuade people to have)

[Gene Kim-Eng]

You can make all sorts of practical usability-based arguements, but if
the product managers for your new product have the level of disinterest
in documentation that you say they do, that will most likely be a waste
of time as they've already committed to their preconceptions.  Since you
already have one product that does have context-sensitive help, your
first step should probably be to talk to the product manager/s for that
product and find out why they decided to have it and what the advantages
(if any) have been.  Then look at your competitors' products and see if
they have it.  If so, your most effective arguement will probably be that
the lack of a help system that is "standard" in your market will make the
new product stick out like a sore and outdated thumb in comparison to
its competitors and your own company's other products.

Of course, if it turns out that your other product's managers can think of
no advantage they've realized from their help and your competitors don't
have it either, you could just be out of luck on this.

Gene Kim-Eng


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Carrie Baker" <carriebak at gmail.com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l at lists.techwr-l.com>
Sent: Tuesday, July 04, 2006 11:21 PM
Subject: Advantages of Context Sensitive Help (to persuade people to have)


> We have 2 sets of products in our company, with different teams of Product
> managers.
> One of the products has context sensitive help.
> The other is newer and does not yet have context sensitive help.
> I think Context sensitive help would be a good thing for this software
> product, but the product managers really do not see any advantage in this
> and info.