atw: Re: I'm going into a documentation management role
- From: Elizabeth Fullerton <Elizabeth_Fullerton@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx" <austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2011 09:37:01 +1000
That sounds like a fantastic role!
My experience has been that when I give a lunchtime session on how to use Word
that it's fairly-well attended by people who use it a lot, and who are amazed
when I start with "this is how styles work and this is why you use them". I
usually get through some of the more common gotchas and spend a lot of time
answering questions. We never have time to cover everything, and everyone
always wants another session.
You will have people like that in your organisation - the ones who want to be
more efficient and spend less time fighting Word, and who will make the effort
to follow what you set, as long as you can show them why it's a good idea. So
that's a good start in moving to new standards (when you decide what they are!)
It will never be 100% perfect, but as long as it pretty much works, you can
call that a success - so start by aiming for that!
Regards
Elizabeth Fullerton, CBAP
Lead Consultant
Infosys Australia & New Zealand
Ph: +61 3 9680 2000
Fax: +61 3 9860 2999
www.infosys.com<http://www.infosys.com>
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From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Kate Macumber [kate.macumber@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Tuesday, 19 July 2011 8:05 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: atw: Re: I'm going into a documentation management role
I think with Word templates, I'd be going with the KISS principle...
Having said that, I believe I will have control over the external and more
important documentation, but the internal documentation will be written by
those people who use processes, procedures and so forth - these may be in Word,
but they also have internal documentation tools (?) that I believe they will be
using.
However this role is broader than just getting people to write documentation in
Word or similar. It's about managing and documenting company knowledge, making
that knowledge/documentation accessible (SharePoint, Intranet, Internet,
changing the format (online help, etc) to make the documentation
accessible...), managing versions, finding situations in which people's
knowledge isn't documented (finding gaps) and getting documentation written to
fill those gaps, etc, etc.
Kate.
On 19 July 2011 10:32, Christine Kent
<cmkentau@xxxxxxxxx<mailto:cmkentau@xxxxxxxxx>> wrote:
Gulp. Do you mean, you have to get everyone who uses Word as a secondary tool
of trade rather than primary, to use it properly? I might be jumping to
conclusions that this is a subset of your role, but if it is, here are your
three options – just for this tinsy winsy subset of your role of course:
• the KISS option of making very simple clean tidy templates and
praying. Prayers are not often answered.
• the SUZY path, which is to design hugely complex templates with all
manner of controls to try to force people to produce nice documents. This path
also fails. Even totally incompetent users HATE to be controlled and so will
destroy all your work as soon as your back is turned.
• the common sense option, which is to produce nice simple templates as
in the KISS option and then to train everyone to use them properly, which of
course, an organisation will never do. Let me know if you need a trainer!
Ah, how nice to be out of all that!
Christine
From:
austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
[mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]
On Behalf Of Kate Macumber
Sent: Tuesday, 19 July 2011 7:04 PM
To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx<mailto:austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Subject: atw: I'm going into a documentation management role
Hi All,
I have accepted a job as a documentation manager (i.e. managing all of the
internal/external documentation in an organisation and getting others - not
technical writers - to write that documentation).
Everyone seems to think that I can do it (my current boss, the interviewers,
colleagues), but having worked as a software/hardware technical writer for the
past 15 years, this is a very different role for me.
As such, I was wondering if any of you has done this before and whether you can
provide me with any pointers / useful resources.
Thanks for your help,
Kate.
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