Re: users writing procedures

Subject: Re: users writing procedures
From: topsidefarm -at- mva -dot- net
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 30 Apr 2004 06:38:44 -0600


> Steve Schwarzman wrote"
>
> The presumed advantage of users writing their own procedures is that they
> know what to include and are accurate. This isn't necessarily so, and I'd
> say it's not so even in a majority of cases.


How true! My experience with this runs to the extremes. I think there are
two things you really have to be aware of here. The first is what may be
motivating the people who are doing the writing for you. The second is the
degree of "tribal knowledge" within the industry.

In my present position, the engineers I work with don't like to travel and
don't want to continually deal with the customer after the machines are
shipped. These guys bend over backward to see to it that I get everything
I need for documentation so that the customer has everything they need to
run and maintain the machines. In a situation like this, I know that I can
generally trust the information I am given. In addition, the industry's
knowledge base in fairly well documented: I can easily verify the info I
receive.

However, I one of my former lives, the situation was exactly the opposite.
My SME's were the field service techs. The problem was that these guys
made big money when they traveled due to the company's very generous
travel allowances. I learned very quickly that trusting what these guys
wrote was not only unwise, it was downright dangerous. These guys felt
that if I provided all the answers in the documentation, their jobs would
be at risk. Knowledge was held very close and very little was ever
documented, which was why I was hired in the first place.


>In my experience, the best
> combination is an informed outsider (i.e. a writer with business and
> technical knowledge of the field) working with an expert (in this case, the
> user).


This has always been my great advantage, and seems to be the secret of
most of the truly successful TW's I know. I grew up around machine tools
and manufacturing equipment. I can figure out very quickly when someone is
trying to BS me. Working with someone who is knowledgeable about the
specific machines, coupled with my general background in machinery, allows
me to obtain the information I need.

One thing I did learn (and I'm not trying to reignite the tech knowledge
vs. writing ability debate) is that, if the people you are dealing with
know that you have the technical knowledge, they are more likely to
provide solid information. In the case with the field service guys, it all
came to a head when I had to spend some time in the assembly shop helping
work off some backlog. They laughed the first day I showed up. However,
when I did a complete assembly on a gearbox in eight hours (a job which
took an experienced tech about six), and it passed inspection on the first
shot, they knew that they were dealing with someone who knew what was
going on. No, they didn't "get religion" and instantly become my best
friends, but the information situation did slowly improve.

I guess this really is one of those issues where "it depends". There are
situations where it will work beautifully, and there are others where it
will be disasterous. This is where our professional judgement comes into
play. It is up to each one of us to figure out where we stand along that
spectrum and then work accordingly.

Jason A. Czekalski

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