Do it yourself

[Andrew Plato <intrepid_es -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Ever noticed how many posts you see on this list where people ask something
like this: 

> How do you get ZZZZ done?  I'm interested in how others solve this
> problem.

Remember what good old Harry Truman said? "The buck stops here." Well, I got a
new one: "The doc stops here."

Part of the documentation process (or chaos) is being able to put together
complex designs (ideas, whatever) into some comprehensible form. As the writer,
you have to own that process from beginning to end. Slicing and dicing it off
to other people is a recipe overgeneralization and inaccuracy.

How many times have you read text like this:

"Enter the proper port name in the Port Name feild."

Wow. That's really helpful. How many internationally recognized process
consultants did it take to information map that chunk of wisdom? I find a lot
of companies churning out this "tautology documentation" because they have
over-sanitized their documentation process to the point where nobody REALLY
knows what they are documenting. 

I don't know how many projects my company has taken over where the core problem
was writers who did nothing but bicker over timelines and slice off more and
more of their work to people who were absolutely NOT qualified to do the work.
Rather than sit down and write the damn documents they cut up the project into
10,000 little pieces and in the end, none of them fit together. Then they had
to spend 10,000 more hours making all these pieces fit back together. It is
usually about then that the management grows frustrated, fires the lot and
hires us. Good for me, bad for them. 

Like graphic artists. These people are good with colors and layers - not
networking diagrams.  If I want a good network diagram - I do it myself. If we
need to print the docs, I go find out what it takes. Why hand this off to some
secretary who only wants to get drunk. They'll just screw it up and make me
look bad. 

If the job needs to be done right - DO IT YOURSELF.  Make it happen and quit
waiting for a Purchase Order from the Gods. 

Graphics - Usability - Editing - whatever. Learn how to do it all. That way,
you can make reasonable judgments about quality and capability without having
to resort to some false "rule book" or the collective warm snuggles of places
like TECHWR-L. 

For every layer of abstraction you add to the documentation process you lose
the clarity and consistency of a single vision. Tools, theories, processes,
artists - whatever. It still comes down to one dolt on a computer figuring
stuff out and explaining it to readers who are even bigger dolts. 

Eh, I'm ranting. What the hell do I know. 

Andrew Plato  


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