ISO 26514 draft ready for comment [long]

[CapDev Communications]

At first glance, I reacted very much as others have stated. However, it's
important that we all submit our comments. I showed the draft to one of our
senior engineers who is also an excellent writer and who has had experience
with ISO committees. She and I will meet on our own time to provide review
comments by September 8. Given that ISO will set a standard that we might
well be required to follow, especially for international audiences, we need
to voice our opinions beforehand and not wait until it's a done deal to
complain.

Are there fellow techwhirlers who might want to compare notes before
September 8? Would a dedicated discussion thread be useful?

Pat Egan


On 7/27/06, Peter Neilson <neilson at alltel.net> wrote:
>
> I've only peeked at the introduction. I won't have time to
> look at the whole thing until next week--I'm too busy looking
> for tech-writing work and taking care of the horses. (At our
> place we actually have BOTH ends of the horse.)
>
> I'll have to take issue with the second sentence of the
> introduction, though, right now, before it escapes.
>
>   "The documentation can be the first tangible item that
>   the user sees, and so influences the user's first
>   impressions of the product."
>
> This is rarely the case. We have already talked too much about
> how nobody actually reads or even picks up the user manual, and
> if the product is well designed, there may not even be a user
> manual. Sometimes even the help files go totally unnoticed.
>
> I'll admit that, 20 or more years ago there was a crying need
> for good documentation as a sales tool. Often the sales
> force was selling vaporware, and the only way they could
> show anything to the prospects was a slick prototype of
> the user manual.
>
> So the whole beast puts forth its necessity on a false premise.
> Do we need anything else besides shoot it dead before it collapses
> in front of us as we write and needs to be carted off before
> we can start our next documentation task?
>
> Where is my Heffalump Gun?
>
> Gene Kim-Eng wrote:
> > Ok, I've taken a quick flip through the draft, and I don't even agree
> > that these
> > are "requirements."  What I'm seeing here is something that is midway
> > between
> > being a Level 2 process document and a Level 3 work instruction
> document.
> > And at 129 pages, it's more than twice the size of my department's Level
> 3
> > instruction document (which includes a copy of our style guide as well
> > as the
> > actual work instructions).
> >
> > I'll start in on the comments template, but for now all I can say
> is...OMG.
> >
> > Gene Kim-Eng
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-- 
Patricia Egan