User and Administrator guides

[Gilda Spitz <Gilda_Spitz -at- MARKHAM -dot- LONGVIEW -dot- CA>]

Here's a question that has reared its ugly head in our department several
times recently.

In our documentation suite, we have (among others) a user guide and an
administrator guide. In the early days of our software, the division of
tasks between a user and an administrator was pretty clear-cut, and it made
sense to address the two audiences separately.

However, every new version of the software provides more flexibility, and
therefore more overlap of tasks. The administrator can choose to delegate
almost all tasks to one other user, or various users, if desired. He or she
can also choose to continue to perform all those tasks personally. Among
our user base, there is no preferred approach - some delegate a lot, some a
little, and some not at all.

So the problem is - where do you describe those delegated tasks? Up to now
we've been putting them in the admin guide, and including a note explaining
that these tasks may be performed by general users if the administrator
chooses to delegate them.  We also put a note in the user guide, pointing
to the admin guide. But with each new version of the software, with more
and more overlap, this becomes more and more cumbersome.

We've considered combining the two books into one. But that would produce a
very large book (probably about 600 pages or more) that will be
overwhelming for most users, I think.

Do other people "out there" have the same problem? What do you do?

Gilda Spitz
Manager, Documentation and Translation
Longview Solutions Inc.


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