Your opinion, please!

Subject: Your opinion, please!
From: "Brian Das" <brian_das -at- hotmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 17 Jun 2003 23:07:19 +0000


Hi folks,

I've been asked to recommend solutions to a documentation problem, and I'm hoping you whirlers can help me by picking apart my ideas.

About half of our clients operate in a heavily regulated environment. The regulatory body demands that our clients communicate their day-to-day transactions to the regulatory body with XML. We've customized our software for those clients, and continue to do so (for a fee) as the regulations change.

But the clients are completely baffled and frustrated by the whole regulatory environment, and how the software works in it. They don't get the concepts, including the underlying technology (XML). So they can't even begin to understand how those concepts function "on the ground" (i.e. in the software).

As a result, the company is getting rocked on several fronts. Support is lead by a real softie who won't say no or ask for money whenever a panicked client calls for help. Same with data conversion people -- they're spending countless hours scrubbing and fixing corrupt data. Documentation (me) is constantly throwing together ad-hoc, fire-fighting documents for free to help a handful of clients out of a jam each time regulations change. The company emails these docs to clients, and then....well, who knows what happens to them after that?

I'm just starting to put together my recommendations to solve the documentation problem, and I wanted some feedback.

First, I want to recommend a handful of mini-tutorials (delivered online somehow) that illustrate the concepts. Using diagrams and a conversational tone, I want these docs to teach the concepts that clients need to understand before they can start to solve their own problems. These concepts won't change much over time, so I'm pretty sure it will be worth the effort to develop the content.

But the rest of the information -- the tactical, click-by-click stuff that changes every few weeks as regulations change -- seems to be a maintenance nightmare in the making.

So I'd like to deliver it in a kind of knowledge base. Here's what I mean by knowledge base: Informal "articles", planned by me but written by subject matter experts around the company, added to our support Web page.

In time, super-users with whom we have good relationships could also write some articles. (I've been told these super-users are happy to share their knowledge with other client on the phone, but are limited because the knowledgeable clients aren't likely to have free time at the exact moment a struggling client needs it. So I think there would be some willingness among clients to write a few hundred words...)

Essentially, I'm hoping that by moving the writing effort around the company and putting the results on the Web, with me in a planning & editorial role, the knowledge will get out there faster amd be more readily available.

Given this high-level overview of the situation, what do you think? Please shoot as many holes as possible in the idea, so I can either scrap it or improve it. Thanks for your ideas!

Cheers,
Brian

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