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Hi guys...I was accused of being a little harsh in my
response. I knew I was being a little harsh...I knew I
was being alot more harsh than that...we'll call it
tough love, and I hesitated quite a long time before
hitting the send button.
I didn't have a problem with the request so much as I
had the problem with the feeling that I get from a
number of posters that they really don't want to do
the hard stuff (learn, study, ask users, research,
experiment, etc.) and if someone would send them a
template that theuy could pour some words into, fine.
Maybe...(probably?) not the case in this situation,
but we've all seen them.
If it had started out with: "Hi, guys...I need to do a
Release Note. I did a search and came up with 3
different types of Release Notes, and while they have
"Y" in common, they differ on the way they address the
following:
hardware upgrade requirements
software version requirements
user training
upgrade deploymwent.
In the case of item 1, is it better to include generic
hardware requirtements or is it better to make the
requirements specific to my corporate platform."
In the case of item 2, ....
..or something like that.
It would be apparent that the user had thought about
the document requirement, had identified specific
needs, had applied that analysis to their specific
environment, and was still having problems. Then, even
if individual issues weren't addressed, I'd have the
comfort to know that the person would even have the
first clue about what to do WITH the information once
I'd sent it.
..now, I'm hungry and I'm getting something to eat.
=====
John Posada, Merck Research Laboratories
Sr Technical Writer, WinHelp and html
(work) john_posada -at- merck -dot- com - 732-594-0873
(pers) jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com - 732-291-7811
Give me a woman who loves beer and I will conquer the world.
Kaiser Wilhelm
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