Re: Business Process Information in a User Guide

["Christensen, Kent" <lkchris -at- sandia -dot- gov>]

re:  I have been asked to include these business process maps in the user
guide.

Well, of course there are certainly concepts like prerequisite, footnote,
bibliography, etc.  It happens all the time, and sometimes the material is
quoted and sometimes it's just referenced.

It's not particularly clear in the original posting, but ...

... if the company using the guide and the company prescribing the process
are the same, this is a good opportunity for posting the material on the
company intranet.  Link from the user guide to the bibliography/prerequisite
process material rather than duplicating it in the user guide.

... if the processes are general and intended as examples for multiple
firms, include them in the user guide.  Or don't--see below.

Actually, this situation sounds like the latter, but consider the following.
It's stated the idea came from "audience analysis," which makes it sound
like a customer request whether it was ultimately verbalized by your boss or
not.  The "customer is always right" is a pretty common approach, and it
sounds like your audience analysis was quite successful in that it provided
you the direction your customers want.

Getting it accomplished is another thing, of course.  Sometimes there can be
too much customer input to reasonably include it all.  Your job, then, is
ranking and prioritizing.  You could get more customer help with that.  

Perhaps yours is a situation where training is key.  That is, the product is
best used following training, and a manual can hardly ever be enough.  If
that's the case, why not minimize the manual and try to sell some training
or consulting?  It certainly appears like that's the approach taken by
Oracle and others.  There would never be trainers or consultants if it could
always be done with a manual.  Yes, each customer in your audience analysis
would like the manual customized for them, but ... there's no reason why
this should be free (see dot.bomb).


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