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.
Question: How polished-looking does my first draft need to be?
Answer:
This is an important question, now that documentation has not only moved online, but has migrated into Wiki-like systems where you can have miles of empty placeholder topics, maybe 10 of which are actually populated – and it’s all in your live system because it’s always a work in progress. There’s no way a user can tell from the listings which topics actually have data in them.
Question: Should I close my Wells Fargo bank account?
Answer:
Not necessarily. That’s like being a deer covered in ticks and you think removing ONE tick is going to make you healthy.
Question: I need a time machine to go backwards 2 days in order to reflect last-minute decisions.
Answer:
People just want to wait until the past possible second to commit to a decision, but then, they want everything else to fall into place instantaneously to reflect it. The result is that vanishing slice of time that you’ll have to reflect all these decisions in the documentation.
Question: Isn’t there a way to set up my docs so that each piece of information appears in only one place?
Answer:
Theoretically yes, if you don’t mind a cure that is worse than the disease.
Question: For the past several weeks, I’ve been having nightmares about my phone acting crazy. Should I see a shrink or an exorcist?
Answer:
I would try to enjoy these nightmares for their colorful and bizarre content, and not worry too much. These are anxiety dreams, which are more typically expressed as “examination dreams” where you’re suddenly back in high school taking that old trigonometry exam all over again – while naked. Anxiety is normal, and is your brain’s way of working things out.
Question: How do I know if those dates are real?
Answer: If the prototype hardware part has been ordered, it’s real. Otherwise, it’s not.
Question:
Our new project scheduling tool allows exactly one day to write and translate all the manuals for a major new system. Are they nuts? What do I do?
Answer:
Project managers maintain complicated Gantt charts with dependencies in order to foster the illusion that projects follow an orderly process. Projects are more like wild beasts tamed by chairs, and even that only goes so far.
Question: I have this friend who keeps breaking dates with me at the last possible second. Each time there’s a plausible reason, but I’m beginning to wonder what’s really going on.
Answer:
Welcome to the Land of Excuses, where good intentions count as reality. The old saying “The road to hell is paved with good intentions” can be appended with “roofed with excuses, and wallpapered over with rationalizations.”
Art Before Science 