Re: system administrators and documentation

Subject: Re: system administrators and documentation
From: Gene Kim-Eng <gene -at- genek -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 27 May 2003 21:18:10 -0700


That wasn't actually what I was referring to. To give a better example, a company
I worked for a few years back developed an instrument that had something like
30 possible applications. Marketing determined that some 75% of paying customers
would be using 5 or 6 of these, so we documented the hell out of those 5 or 6, and
a couple of others as well. The remaining ones remained "undocumented," as in
we never said anything about them, or "semidocumented," in that we inferred from
the marketing materials that the instrument was capable of such things in "customized
configurations." If a customer inquired about any of the un or semidocumented
features, the reply they got was "I can connect you to a Product Support Engineer
for a quote on a custom application." However, the customers who bought the
instrument for those 5 or 6 most used applications always got all the documentation
they could ever hope to need on them.

Gene Kim-Eng



At 09:29 AM 5/27/2003 -0400, Brian Das wrote:

Of course, a good sales strategy can make them happier about spending those
dollars. As Gene Kim-Eng wrote, "Strategically, it depends on how good a job
the company does at selling and delivering that consulting support." I like
this. If you subscribe the traditional "hurt-and-rescue" sales strategy,
unusable documents leave the inexperienced system administrator in a world
o' hurt (but dazzled and intrigued by the document's geekiness), and our
consultants come to the rescue.



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Follow-Ups:

References:
Re: system administrators and documentation: From: Andrew Plato
Re: system administrators and documentation: From: Brian Das

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