structured Frame

[Fred Ridder]

Marcus, Marcus, Marcus.
In the abstract, I completely agree with what you say. My
postings in this thread, though, have been written to address
the specific context of the original poster, who is a sole writer
at a company which has a significant body of unstructured
documentation, and who is thinking about experimenting
with structure. As you say, the kind of far-reaching information
integration you are talking about requires disciplines and
resources that span the entire company, and that simly didn't
seem like a possibility in the context of the OP's query.



>From: mcarr at allette.com.au
>To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
>Subject: RE: structured Frame
>Date: Wed, 12 Sep 2007 22:44:13 +1000 (EST)
>
>
>Fred Ridder wrote:
>
> > There *are* some real benefits, but
> > they tend to be less quantifiable tangible and harder to proove
> > to managers or business analysts who have to sign off on the
> > budget and implementation plan. The gains in collaboration and
> > writing a topic only once, which are generally more demonstrable,
> > become more significant as the number of writers increases, and
> > the big cost savings come when you're doing single-sourcing and/or
> > translation. My point was just that for a single writer producing
> > documents in a single language with a low degree of single-
> > sourcing, it will be harder to make a compelling *business* case
> > for adopting structure.
>
>No, no, no, no, no. You're starting at the wrong end. Data is not created
>to showcase the talents of technical writers - it's a serious corporate
>asset. The reason that organizations haven't done more interesting and
>valuable things like implementing configuration management from
>requirements right through coding and down to the user documentation is
>that it has been too hard due to disparate data formats, systems that
>won't talk to each other and an unwillingness for documentation people to
>cooperate with each other. Much as I dislike the term "silos", that is
>precisely what a lot of documentation efforts produce. A structured silo
>might look nice and work well for the tech writer, but it's still just a
>silo.
>
>Tech writers willing to embrace structure are faced with a unique
>opportunity to add significant value to the whole organization, but they
>should not be expected to do it by themselves. In fact, it's unlikely that
>they would be capable of doing it themselves, any more than a database
>designer would be capable of putting together elegant documentation.
>
>Nonetheless, a tech writer willing to assist with improving corporate-wide
>data integration is a valuable resource. Is this going to be the easiest
>path for the tech writer? Nope - it would be far easier just to design
>nice documentation. Would it be a good career move? Yes, provided your
>management recognizes the opportunity. Is it good for the organization?
>Unquestionably - documents are done for. It's information now.
>
>
>Marcus Carr
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