Question: Have you ever worked on any products that had undocumented features?
Answer:
Hah, no, but here’s one from a friend – it’s a medical device. No, not a “medical device” that’s really a dildo… an actual, real, medical device, for use by doctors performing outpatient surgery.
The 10 Warrior Principles of Ancient Khemet were presented to me in around 1990 or so, and are shown around the edges of this talisman.
Question: Are performance metrics just nuts, or has it always been this way? I’ve never missed a deadline but strangely enough, that is not one of the things that gets measured.
Answer:
Performance metrics are for investors, to show what a great job the company is doing at cutting costs while increasing productivity. Metrics are ultimately designed to contain risk: for example, to keep people from getting too many salary raises, or to demonstrate a “commitment to quality”.
Question: Every time I start a project it always seems so straightforward, and then a week later it’s a hot mess. What am I doing wrong?
Answer:
Ahaha, there’s nothing wrong with you, this always happens. Projects are like rocks. They look smooth and clean on the surface until you pick them up and see what’s living underneath. As a tech writer your job is to document the worms in a way that makes them look like something other than what they are.
Question: At my old job, I could sometimes write the documentation before the developers had their meetings. Here, all my guesses are wrong, pretty much all the time. Have I lost my touch?
Answer:
I think the difference is that WAK! is a hardware company that makes manufactured parts rather than a software company that sells an infrastructure or installable application. With software, you get weekly patches over the Internet. Hardware has a certain chaotic yet tangible reality to it, and you can’t dismiss it as easily.
Question: Everyone’s using Google Docs or Confluence to manage their projects and write help files, but nobody can find anything. I have 2 weeks to fix it. How would you tackle something like this?
Answer:
I have yet to see a place with a coherent information architecture based solely on Google Docs. If it exists, they ain’t talking. Mostly people either pretend it’s coherent already, or that they don’t need no stinkin’ coherence, because they’re nimble and can think on their feet.
Question: Why do I have such a hard time getting started?
Answer:
Procrastination, like phobia, is fear-based: a form of avoidant behavior. What are you avoiding? The fear of death, supposedly. I’m not sure how not cleaning the cat box is a fear of death. Maybe it’s the thought of having to face how awful a person you are for even letting the cat box get to the state that it’s in. Maybe failing to convert all your docs to DITA is the same as letting the cat box go too long.
Question: Our projects use clever code names before the official name is chosen, and they don’t have any relation to what the product is. How do I keep them all straight?
Answer:
You’ll just have to keep your own secret list and charge everyone a dollar to look at it.
Question: Is anyone using structured tools such as FrameMaker anymore? What is this “lightweight” stuff I keep hearing about?
Answer:
The eternal conflict between permanence and expediency is another effect of the speeded-up world we live in, where things that used to take hours or days can now be done on your smart phone in 5 seconds or less. Lightweight is great as long as you have a way to tell when it’s no longer enough, and a plan for what to do when that critical mass is reached.
Question: Is it just me, or is there too much going on?
Answer:
I have to vent about the modern high-tech, startup expectation that everyone can wear many hats and stay connected to the team 24-7 via chat, texting, Skype, Google Docs. There are so many interruptions that it’s impossible to focus on any one task for more than 5 minutes at a time.
Art Before Science 