Question: How many drafts do you typically go through, and how do you know when it’s been too many?

Answer:

Ideally, 6 drafts or fewer. In actuality, it’s often 7-12.

The number of drafts doesn’t depend on the length of the doc, either. I’ve had one-page hardware instruction sheets that went through 17 drafts (due to pop-up stakeholders and differences of opinion amongst people who never talked directly to one another).

If things start to cycle with no end, seek a Higher Power, i.e., your management, or someone’s management. “Decision paralysis” usually means that there’s some dysfunction in the team itself or elsewhere in the organization.

If you’re in a lightweight environment where “drafts and versions don’t matter” then maybe approvals don’t matter, either, and you can try saying that while looking for your next job.

Question: I just got 2 different directives on the same project from different people, who don’t seem to be aware of one another even though they’re on the same Rapid Development team.

Answer:

This is the “flock of headless chickens” syndrome, and is not your fault.

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Question: I had a one-hour meeting today with 12 people who all agreed that some compliance standard had to be addressed in the manual, but none of them could tell me how. I read the compliance standard and it’s complete gobbledygook that doesn’t seem to apply at all to the product. I could take a guess and then have them tell me it’s wrong, but what DO I put in the manual?

Answer:

This is what is known as “committee heat death“, a form of entropy. What worked for me was yelling.

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