RE: Re: "If the docs are too good..."

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

technical -at- theverbalist -dot- com> wrote in message news:227937 -at- techwr-l -dot-  -dot-  -dot- 
>
>Well, it's Friday and y'all are being too serious. Here's something to
>have some fun with ...
>
>So an SME I was talking to floated the ol' air biscuit that he "was told
>by someone who'd been told that if the product docs were too good, that
>clients wouldn't purchase the training."  Any suggestions for snappy
>come-backs to that one?

Depends on the context.  Sometimes I hear this from SMEs who just want
to get out from under their tasked participation in documentation efforts.
But sometimes it's a red flag that somebody - most likely the writer or one 
of the other SMEs - is trying to "gold plate" the documentation, in which 
case they need an education on what represents "good" documentation in 
our organization.  Our definition is documentation that provides users with
sufficient information to enable them to get the product to do what our
Marketing people told them it would do, is delivered on time (i.e., *with 
the product*) and supports the product's strategic plan (if the plan includes 
deriving revenue from selling training, then content that goes beyond the first 
two criteria may belong in the training materials, not the user guide).  

So if you're confident that your document is aligned with the product's strategic 
plan and the SME was shining you on while you were hounding him for his late 
input or review comments, you could tell him that you're working toward a goal 
set by Management and he's now the critical path to completion; if not, maybe 
you need to smile and go take another look at what you're writing.

Gene Kim-Eng