- Whether to mention a pregnancy in a job interview
- A possible meeting protocol
- What are an end-user's responsibilities?
- Another take on opening PCs, or not
- Getting some process going
- Selling a more open environment to management
- Running an effective meeting
- Licensing rules for virtual machines
- The ROI of metrics
- Legal challenges to virtual machines
March 13, 2007 | Comments: (0)
The importance of documentation
Dear Bob ...A comment about the posting about project estimation ("Problems with project estimation," Advice Line, 2/5/2007): You avoided the question about documentation.
The stakeholders (as opposed to us pizza holders) will scream if the piece that they sponsored doesn't get done, useful, or useless, or not.
Documentation is one way to at least show what has happened and be able to explain the deep-sixing of the pet of overly egoed power-boy.
I'm always looking for a job as a generalist since my way of considering a problem is not just "let's fix it", but where did this whole thing come from and can we get rid of it? It would seem that the only time anyone will consider such a thing is when there is a problem (If it ain't broke, keep it forever).
Your answer is to me one of those perfect answers that can hardly be made to work. I HATE politics!
- Documenter
Dear Documenter ...
You say, "Documentation is one way to at least show what has happened and be able to explain the deep-sixing of the pet of overly egoed power-boy."
I've worked with a wide variety of business managers and executives over a span of several decades. Few were short on ego. More than a few were Pooh-like, perhaps - bears of very little brain.
The pet-idea issue, though, has rarely turned out to be a problem. In most cases, when I dig into them, they turn out to be based on something important. The exceptions always turn out to be ideas that seem entirely plausible on the surface, still are rooted in real issues, and were worth digging into to try to find a solution.
Executive preference can certainly distort priorities. That's a different issue, usually the result of corporate governance mechanisms that require each executive to focus solely on his/her own lemonade stand.
Anyway, I don't think I ducked the documentation issue. Documentation is important ... to remind all participants of what they agreed to and understood in common as the result of face-to-face conversations. If a project team deep-sixes someone's requirement without their being involved in the decision-making process, no amount of documentation will help. The victims will continue to feel like they hold neither steaks nor pizza.
What they're holding tastes more like tofu.
- Bob
Posted by Bob Lewis on March 13, 2007 05:12 AM
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