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I don 't know if looking under "usability" would turn up any references on
validation, but generally validation is one of the activities performed when
one applies usability standards.
If you want references, I know that Sun regularly puts docs through a
validation process. It's part of the whole QA test procedure and in the gigs we
did there, we were very grateful for QA's participation. I believe Oracle's QA
process works pretty much the same way.
On the plus side, validation is an extremely valuable part of checking the
whole package for errors. Software that doesn't undergo some sort of
validation almost invariably turns up some bugs - and errors in production
software tend to undermine the company's credibility. (cf. Microsoft's
notorious practice of shipping buggy first versions of new software, relying on
customers to report bugs and resulting in most experts suggesting that you wait
till several rounds of patches have been issued before you buy the new software
- for example Office XP.) Documentation that doesn't work does the same thing.
On the negative side, it's difficult to squeeze in validation because it has to
happen very late in the production process. Marketing managers tend to focus
heavily on shipping according to schedule, and if development schedules have
slipped - as they invariably do - there's usually little time left for QA's
activities. Defending inclusion of the docs in a QA cycle may be a hard sell
at the end.
As a precaution against this, I've gotten reasonably good at seeing whether a
development group is going to slip into QA's time long before it happens. If I
see signs that this is going to happen, I try to arrange for what I call a
"naive user" to test at least part of the docs before the second draft goes
out. Usually this is done behind the scenes but with the implicit cooperation
of the doc manager. That way there's at least some validation of the docs.
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