Re: system administrators and documentation
Hi Gene,
You wrote, "If a customer inquired about any of the un or semidocumented
features, the reply they got was "I can connect you to a Product Support
Engineer for a quote on a custom application.""
I'm confused!: ) How it that scenario is very different from mine? I think
in both cases, documents are designed to leave certain users' needs unmet,
and consultants are available to meet those needs.
The difference is the intent of the company. It wasn't that we saw the custom
applications as a source of revenue to be mined (though we were certainly
willing to do it), rather we had made a strategic decision that we were willing to
risk foregoing the revenue altogether because we didn't have the the writing
resources to include them as part of the base package (because there
wasn't enough of a market to ensure we'd get a return on the investment of
doing all of them upfront on the off chance that someone might use them).
And then there was the potential chilling effect that facing an additional
300 pages worth of documentation on features they'd never need might have
on the base users. As for meeting certain users' needs unmet, I think that
every product goes through some process of comparing those users' needs
to their revenue potential - or at least, it should.
Gene Kim-Eng
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References:
Re: system administrators and documentation: From: Andrew Plato
Re: system administrators and documentation: From: Gene Kim-Eng
Re: system administrators and documentation: From: Brian Das
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