RE: Structure vs. Substance?

[Mike Stockman <stockman -at- jagunet -dot- com>]

On 6/12/00 12:28 PM, MacDonald, Stephen (Stephen -dot- MacDonald -at- Aspect -dot- com) 
wrote:

>If you could track it back in the history of the doc set's development, lack
>of structure was probably the biggest contributor to the "other problems."
>
>Most documentation flaws I have encountered were directly due to poor, or
>more commonly, no specifications, market requirements, and software
>development process.

Sorry, I'm going to have to disagree with you here. Most documentation 
flaws I've encountered were directly due to lack of the necessary 
information.

On the "bad" projects where I've either worked or been called in to fix, 
the writers were often woefully uninformed about the product. Worse yet, 
they were uninterested in playing with the product, becoming users, 
trying to set it up and make it work as intended, or anything you might 
assume they'd need to do. Instead, they were more interested in having 
information spoon-fed to them by functional specs, developers, and other 
"expert" sources.

Perhaps a good structure or set of processes would have dictated that 
they should first learn the product as much as they can before collecting 
other info, but I doubt it. Certainly that has frequently been the 
managers' response: the doc. sucks because we don't have enough processes 
in place. I always pointed out that the doc sucked because it was wrong 
and lacking useful information, but that point was usually lost.

As I said before, on any project, get the information and content right, 
and then we can talk about having fun with processes.

----->Mike

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