Re: system administrators and documentation

["Brian Das" <brian_das -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Andrew Plato wrote:

"By appealing to experienced people, your products become more elite. This
allows the company to charge more for the product and realize additional
revenue in consulting."

Interesting idea. The reasoning is a bit presumptuous-- "confusion leads to
phone calls, phone calls lead to consulting revenue." I don't think it's a
sound business strategy to assume that an organization's response to useless
information will be to happily gather up a fistful of dollars and return to
the source, asking for better information. But who knows - it could happen.
(What the hell else are they going to do?)

Of course, a good sales strategy can make them happier about spending those
dollars. As Gene Kim-Eng wrote, "Strategically, it depends on how good a job
the company does at selling and delivering that consulting support." I like
this. If you subscribe the traditional "hurt-and-rescue"  sales strategy,
unusable documents leave the inexperienced system administrator in a world
o' hurt (but dazzled and intrigued by the document's geekiness), and our
consultants come to the rescue.

I'm going to yak with management today and see if this is an ok strategy for
them. If I post my resume in a few months, you'll know it didn't work.

Have a good day,
Brian

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