RE: Style guides - doc standards vs processes

["Metzger, Lucinda" <cmetzger -at- dukane -dot- com>]

Andrew Plato responded:

"Is there any time left for doing your job? While all of these things are
nice to have written down, this is secondary, one-off work. This type of
stuff should be developed in down-times.

And yes, you should be able to write documentation without a formal style
guide and documentation plan. The best style guides emerge naturally out
of writers doing the documentation and making decisions about the material
as it is being written."



You read too much into my post, Andrew. The two guides *were* developed
during down times, and are only updated on occasion as dept changes warrant.

And yes, we *did* write documentation without a formal style guide and
documentation plan, for many years. And yes, the style guide *did* emerge
naturally out of making decisions as material was written.

As I indicated in the last line of my post, the two guides can be read and
used by anyone who joins the department, to learn their way around. A new
hire wouldn't know what our typical doc process is, or where to find the few
forms that we use to keep a project papertrail. A new hire wouldn't know who
is typically responsible for what functions in our division. A new hire
wouldn't know how to look up BOMs and other product information in our
central database. And while I do spend one-on-one time with new hires, it
leaves me more time to work on my own projects when I can say "You're ready
to release that doc for publication? Check page 12 of your procedures manual
-- it tells you where to find the print form, who to give it to, and where
to post the PDF file."

You've previously stated that you prefer to pound out docs and focus on the
quality of the content, rather than obsessing over procedures or style guide
issues. That's fine. However, it has saved my group a significant amount of
time and increased our productivity to have things documented in a central
place where everyone can refer to it. Peer edits go faster and more errors
are caught when we're all checking for the same types of things. The
training and sales people are always up to date when we consistently notify
them of our newest releases. When a doc comes up for revisions, we can
easily pull a clean copy of the last rev from the archives instead of
hunting around because the previous writer saved different drafts in various
folders on their hard drive and network drives, and can no longer remember
which is the correct version (or is no longer with the company).

My original post was not intended to re-start the "adhere to strict
procedures" vs "just get the job done" war. I was simply curious to know how
many TW'ers have taken the extra step to document the nuances of their
particular dept processes, and whether they considered it to be part of a
style guide or an altogether separate animal.

Cindy
cmetzger -at- dukane -dot- com

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