"In other words, when you say "we have to document every procedure and process, no matter how mundane or 'common sense' it may seem," you've already lost. You don't need meticulously documented procedures, you need to take those "varying degrees of technical competency" and educate them to a higher level of competency."
I think you may have been approaching it wrong. Don't think about writing out steps 1-10 on every task to make everyone's job scripted. Just lay out the steps for the most common tasks, and then document all the information you can in the Wiki so that when your readers get to that jumping off point they have all the detailed information they need to put the pieces together themselves.
At the last 3 jobs I worked at I helped introduce Mediawiki + LAMP server for departments looking to document procedure and products.
My attitude with documentation was the following:
1) Never assume your reader knows all the steps. Include all details. 2) Create a single article for every single thing, procedure, network element, piece of equipment, department, person, etc. NEVER put multiple entries on one article. 3) If the steps seem too mundane or common to you, then consider creating a seperate article for those steps and refer to that in the other article you are writing.
Departmental wikis are as effective as you make them. Ours tended to be very fast, accurate and did away with the old fashioned M&P meetings and Visio chart hell we had previously.
I spent a whole year and three months levelling my first character to 70 all on my own, no guildies, no friends, just myself.
Afterwards for my alts I used Questhelper. I had already done those quests and I did not feel like wandering around for hours trying to remember each location, mob and detail. Questhelper enabled me to level up those alts quickly.
Besides, the best part of the game is the end-game raiding, and Questhelper has nothing to do with that.
1. The iPhone software requirements posted here were quite clear: iTunes 7.7 or higher. 2. iTunes has always warned iTunes users when they sync a device that has another iTunes' library content on it. It quite clearly warns the user of this and gives them the option to opt out or to continue with the sync by erasing the device's contents. However, Apple quite clearly illustrates how iPhone and iPod users can use multiple iTunes libraries.
The past three places I have worked I have run into walls trying to suggest and implement new ways to make the workplace more productive. Every time you want to document something, a SME throws a hissy fit because of 'job security'. Every time you want to streamline a procedure, some M&P team throws a hissy fit because of 'job security'. All it does is make people angry because more productivity means less jobs for them.
Open a command prompt, type 'ftp releases.mozilla.org', log in as anonymous, then type 'get/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0.6/win32/en-US/Firefox Setup 3.0.6.exe'
They rolled over on it because there are a significant amount of businesses running customized apps that are years old and won't be changed (or won't be paid to be updated). Not listening to businesses meant Vista wasn't going to be considered for those businesses. Now that Vista didn't get adopted up by businesses as the rate they had hoped (for other reasons), now they can revisit this issue without that burden.
On another note, not only have I seen custom enterprise apps that expected to be run with Admin privileges, but also did many other ridiculous things like expect hardcoded file and directory locations on C: and such.
"- Even for Leopard to perform as fast as Tiger you need 1GB of RAM, which is funny considering Apple was making fun of Vista for the exact same reason."
Macs that were sold with Tiger came with 1GB of RAM. Those same Macs that were then upgraded to Leopard ran as fast. That is the position Apple was coming from.
I beg to differ about the second class citizen part. As a former Windows user there is no good Windows complement of some of the Mac software I have, especially GarageBand, TextMate and Xtorrent. If you're basing your opinion on Quicken just know that I gave up on Quicken back when I was still running Windows 2000. It was terrible.
That of course explains why all the competitors have all brought out their "me too" copies; Microsoft Zune, Blackberry Storm, Samsung Instinct, Dell XPS One, Amazon MP3 store, etc.
So for three broken elements on the Dojo 1.1.1 part of the SlickSpeed test Safari has three errors and he completely disqualifies the browser from the end results? Even though it performed well in all the other tests?
Wow, that's insightful.
Well, Chrome doesn't run on my Mac so I disqualify it.
What they should be blaming is themselves, because unlike Linux, Mac users have a native version of Microsoft Office available to them. They also have the choice of iWork '08 if they so desire. Both choices are attractive to Mac users and seemingly have made the demand for a better OOo on Mac not as dire as it would be on Linux.
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Because the compiler ignores whitespace it's probably not the best design decision to let a non-visible character be the end-of-line terminator.
Indeed, the amount of detail put into the steps depends entirely on the intended audience.
Yes, because Apple's track record of sitting still on a product for 5+ years with no improvements speaks for itself.
Err...
That's brilliant. Thank you so much for this.
"In other words, when you say "we have to document every procedure and process, no matter how mundane or 'common sense' it may seem," you've already lost. You don't need meticulously documented procedures, you need to take those "varying degrees of technical competency" and educate them to a higher level of competency."
I think you may have been approaching it wrong. Don't think about writing out steps 1-10 on every task to make everyone's job scripted. Just lay out the steps for the most common tasks, and then document all the information you can in the Wiki so that when your readers get to that jumping off point they have all the detailed information they need to put the pieces together themselves.
At the last 3 jobs I worked at I helped introduce Mediawiki + LAMP server for departments looking to document procedure and products.
My attitude with documentation was the following:
1) Never assume your reader knows all the steps. Include all details.
2) Create a single article for every single thing, procedure, network element, piece of equipment, department, person, etc. NEVER put multiple entries on one article.
3) If the steps seem too mundane or common to you, then consider creating a seperate article for those steps and refer to that in the other article you are writing.
Departmental wikis are as effective as you make them. Ours tended to be very fast, accurate and did away with the old fashioned M&P meetings and Visio chart hell we had previously.
Totally disagree.
I spent a whole year and three months levelling my first character to 70 all on my own, no guildies, no friends, just myself.
Afterwards for my alts I used Questhelper. I had already done those quests and I did not feel like wandering around for hours trying to remember each location, mob and detail. Questhelper enabled me to level up those alts quickly.
Besides, the best part of the game is the end-game raiding, and Questhelper has nothing to do with that.
Over 12 months of wall-to-wall "PLEASE UPGRADE YOUR TELEVISION BY FEBRUARY 17, 2009!" covering the entire bottom of my screen.
If you haven't seen that by now and made plans you deserve to have your TV dropped on your head.
Yes iTunes does warn you that you will lose all the data if you proceed. That is why I was compelled to post about it.
1. The iPhone software requirements posted here were quite clear: iTunes 7.7 or higher.
2. iTunes has always warned iTunes users when they sync a device that has another iTunes' library content on it. It quite clearly warns the user of this and gives them the option to opt out or to continue with the sync by erasing the device's contents. However, Apple quite clearly illustrates how iPhone and iPod users can use multiple iTunes libraries.
Ah, I see, it was missing the ZDNet stamp. :)
The past three places I have worked I have run into walls trying to suggest and implement new ways to make the workplace more productive. Every time you want to document something, a SME throws a hissy fit because of 'job security'. Every time you want to streamline a procedure, some M&P team throws a hissy fit because of 'job security'. All it does is make people angry because more productivity means less jobs for them.
Finally a good opportunity for someone to put the Microsoft Surface to use.
Fair enough, but isn't it possible the owners of a site called "The Pirate Bay" might be aware of what they are facilitating for their users?
Open a command prompt, type 'ftp releases.mozilla.org', log in as anonymous, then type 'get /mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0.6/win32/en-US/Firefox Setup 3.0.6.exe'
They rolled over on it because there are a significant amount of businesses running customized apps that are years old and won't be changed (or won't be paid to be updated). Not listening to businesses meant Vista wasn't going to be considered for those businesses. Now that Vista didn't get adopted up by businesses as the rate they had hoped (for other reasons), now they can revisit this issue without that burden.
On another note, not only have I seen custom enterprise apps that expected to be run with Admin privileges, but also did many other ridiculous things like expect hardcoded file and directory locations on C: and such.
"- Even for Leopard to perform as fast as Tiger you need 1GB of RAM, which is funny considering Apple was making fun of Vista for the exact same reason."
Macs that were sold with Tiger came with 1GB of RAM. Those same Macs that were then upgraded to Leopard ran as fast. That is the position Apple was coming from.
I beg to differ about the second class citizen part. As a former Windows user there is no good Windows complement of some of the Mac software I have, especially GarageBand, TextMate and Xtorrent. If you're basing your opinion on Quicken just know that I gave up on Quicken back when I was still running Windows 2000. It was terrible.
Anyone who has worked in retail will tell you that people do not read signs before asking.
That of course explains why all the competitors have all brought out their "me too" copies; Microsoft Zune, Blackberry Storm, Samsung Instinct, Dell XPS One, Amazon MP3 store, etc.
OpenMoko? Do they still not have a functioning phone yet?
Try SafariBlock instead.
So for three broken elements on the Dojo 1.1.1 part of the SlickSpeed test Safari has three errors and he completely disqualifies the browser from the end results? Even though it performed well in all the other tests?
Wow, that's insightful.
Well, Chrome doesn't run on my Mac so I disqualify it.
It has a larger market share than Linux.
What they should be blaming is themselves, because unlike Linux, Mac users have a native version of Microsoft Office available to them. They also have the choice of iWork '08 if they so desire. Both choices are attractive to Mac users and seemingly have made the demand for a better OOo on Mac not as dire as it would be on Linux.