Re: "Every project is a monster you battle and slay"

Subject: Re: "Every project is a monster you battle and slay"
From: Lin Sims <ljsims -dot- ml -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: "Cardimon, Craig" <ccardimon -at- m-s-g -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 9 Jul 2019 13:10:29 -0400

I don't like the metaphor. You don't have to become a monster to slay a
monster, you become a hero. Monster-slaying is one of the things that
heroes do.

And I don't see aggressively pursuing information as "going mad". It's part
of my job. I can get almost all the information I need from a SME by email
or phone. Often I just walk over and ask (if they're at the same location I
am), but just as often I'll schedule a meeting so I have a guaranteed time
on their calendar. I've rarely had trouble getting cooperation from my
SMEs; when I do, cc'ing their immediate supervisor when asking for
information is usually a good way to get them to pay attention to me.

Generally speaking, my SMEs appreciate that I come to them with pertinent
questions and that I'm trying to understand the product to the point where
I can not only figure out what it does for myself, I can point out to them
when it does something I wouldn't expect or doesn't do something I would
expect. I've found any number of product issues because I dig. I think
there's only been one or two occasions when I've had to point out to
someone who kept saying that they were too busy that I would keep coming
back until I got a satisfactory answer. After the second time, they
answered me when I asked because they found that telling me multiple times
they were too busy to answer me took longer than answering in the first
place. Eventually, they learned to appreciate that I was working hard to
ensure the information in the documents was accurate and complete so that
they wouldn't be bothered with support calls that took up even more of
their time than I did.

Being aggressive doesn't make you a monster, it makes you effective.



On Tue, Jul 9, 2019 at 12:44 PM Cardimon, Craig <ccardimon -at- m-s-g -dot- com> wrote:

> In one of Tom Johnson's latest articles, he posits that if some tech comm
> projects are monsters, does the act of vanquishing them turn us into
> monsters?
>
> Here's the link to Tom's post:
>
> https://idratherbewriting.com/blog/every-project-is-a-monster-you-battle/
>
>
> Cordially,
> Craig Cardimon | Senior Technical Writer
>
>
>
>
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--
Lin Sims
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"Every project is a monster you battle and slay": From: Cardimon, Craig

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