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RE: Why You NEED to be technical - BUT WHEN YOU'RE NOT!
Subject:RE: Why You NEED to be technical - BUT WHEN YOU'RE NOT! From:SIANNON -at- VISUS -dot- JNJ -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 25 Jul 2001 9:20:53
Bill Swallow writes:
"Good points, Nihau. On the flip side, being too technical could hurt the
documentation, as you'd be too close to the product to document it from a
base level of understanding (most users)."
Sorry to pick on you, Bill, but you just gave the most recent example of
something that's been bugging me through this entire
technical/non-technical discussion: the assumption that end users are
always the customer of our documentation.
While yes, the majority of tech writing work may be the production of user
guides and helpfiles, a significant percentage of what the people on this
list work on includes or incorporates detailed design specifications, API
manuals, troubleshooting and maintenance procedures/specs, the kind of
detailed reference we regularly express a desire to see for the tools we
use, detailed process flows, failure testing, system modelling, requirement
specs, proposals, analyses, and so forth.
When considering the customer as a factor in this discussion, we may want
to recognize that the users of the product aren't always the customers.
While "(most users)" may not require a significant level of detail or logic
within their docs, until a representative survey can be taken (which means
including the 1-post-a-quarter wallflowers), we cannot be certain whether
that majority is closer to 99% or 51%.
(Less than half of my documentation is for an end user, BTW -- the main
stuff I work with right now is detailed design specifications and
functional testing.)
Shauna I.
...need to go hunt me down an SME now, and wrestle some details from
him...
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