[Framers] What causes documentation to fail

John Sgammato john.sgammato at actifio.com
Fri May 20 10:33:50 PDT 2016


And there's the Miracle of Compound Interest - every time you add a new
title, you then have to maintain it from version to version, so the
workload grows even if the department doesn't.

On Fri, May 20, 2016 at 1:27 PM, Catherine Woods <catwood55 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Documentation creep - like every 4 months project management "thinks" up
> another document (or decides that original docs should be split into x) and
> expects the one assigned writer to pick it up
> Buy-in from project management on the documentation to be written that
> "don't change over time"
> Mysterious end-customer requirements - an end-customer that can dictate the
> documentation
>
> I speak from experience on documentation failure.
> Catherine
>
> On Fri, May 20, 2016 at 9:48 AM, <john.x.posada at us.hsbc.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > Hi, guys...by end of today, I need to present to my manager a few bullet
> > points for a presentation she is doing on Monday.
> >
> > The subject is: "What Causes Documentation to Fail"
> >
> > I've started with a few points:
> >
> >    Not writing to a well-understood target audience
> >    Including too little or too much information
> >    Failure to bring documentation into the project early enough in the
> >    project
> >    Failure to establish a governance, review, and approval structure
> >    Lack of clear  roles and responsibilities
> >    Belief that “anyone can produce acceptable documentation”
> >    Lack of feedback early enough in the process to implement without
> >    wasting a large amount of work and/or affecting deadline
> >    Scope creep
> >
> > Anyone want to add more to the list?
> >
> >
> > John X Posada
> > SR AML Syst & Ops Supt Data Analyst | Global Risk Analytics | HSBC North
> > America Holdings Inc
> > 330 Madison Ave., NY NY
> >
> >  __________________________________________________________________
> >
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> >       john.x.posada at us.hsbc.com
> >
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