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I work in a world so procedurally driven I’m surprised the toilet paper isn’t printed with instructions. Please come to my place of employment and explain to the engineers and tech writers that they lack the competence for #3. For technical work, a technician must be part of the process.
Happy Birthday! (And – bookmarked.)
I am dead serious when I say you have to do the process as part of documenting it. If I am documenting a procedure I have the technicians walk me through the process, including actually sitting in the chair they use and exercising the equipment. (Though generally on a simulator.)
One job I interviewed for was writing maintenance procedures for wind turbines. And I was expected to climb the turbine (300 feet high) as part of my work documenting the procedures. Rightfully so.
Seawriter
Here they write procedures, then we do table top exercises with them — green lining a lot of stuff — then slow run throughs with them making more edits.
Pro Tip: Every organization has a slow performer. Use that individual to test the procedure. If Slow Joe understands the procedure, the star performers will pick it up with no problems.
Judging and tailoring your procedure to the intended audience can be a struggle. Personally, I dislike procedures that assume the end user knows absolutely nothing. Stating the pre-requisites required of the user at the outset is sometimes the answer. “These instructions assume the user has knowledge of MS Excel and IPv4.” as an example. And when personally involved in helping a neophyte with someone else’s procedure, my mantra is often “Google is your friend”.
I wish my bosses would write down their instructions and orders.
I don’t assume Slow Joe knows nothing. Slow Joe knows the prerequisites. He is just bad at them.He is part of the organization.
My goal with this suggestion is to find the lowest common denominator.
Seawriter
I’m printing this out to go in my teaching folder. I don’t often teach art classes but when I do, this will help a lot in prepping for each project. I’m not a born teacher and it always surprises me how disorganized a lesson can become when I don’t do these steps beforehand – particularly the ‘optimizing’ part. There are always a number of supplies that are used several times through the creation process, and thinking through the most efficient way to use them during the project will undoubtedly improve the lesson.
Happy birthday, Seawriter, and a great post.
Thanks, Seawriter.
The Ricochetti have such a wealth of knowledge and wisdom. I learn a lot. I like the best is reading the blinding simple ideas that I never thought of but now will never forget. “Gather and Go” is such a concept.
The August Series is up and the theme is Cities.
So Happy Birthday Sea,
As for the topic I have been on both ends of the process professionally for a similar amount of years as you. I though I disliked writing the procedures, but having been on the receiving end for the last two decades, I think reviewing and getting them into shape can be a more seriously brain numbing exercise. My writing skill are abysmal, (the product of a public school education) so it has always been penance.
Unfortunately the value of the items we are testing in not trivial, and the techs do follow them right off a cliff. So caffeine all around and then grind out the test procedures line by line before we vacuum tank the article.
On the personal front, one of the reasons I purchased and built the airplane in the upper left corner was they had one of the best set of instructions I saw before I purchased. I reviewed a lot of instruction sets before I committed. Well even with what I thought was comprehensive guide, a lot of head scratching ensued with frequent calls to the factory for details. This probably dragged the process out by a good year and change.
The next project I am doing has even poorer instructions. I already purchased them so I know. I would consider it more of order of activities list, (with illustrations!).
The plane has the characteristics I want so as I mentioned elsewhere I am taking a 3 month sabbatical living in a trailer at the hanger of the manufacturer in Dec to build it under their nose(s). I will try to document my progress for the few geeks here who declared interest in the process (we see he noted under his breath). But I am hoping the ability to grab someone by the sleeve will insure no mistakes or back tracking, which really extended the build time of the last project.
So it just like doing your little models right? Just full scale!!!
Keep us informed, GLDIII. It sounds like a great way to spend the fading months of 2015, and many of us will find it very interesting.
We call this malicious compliance. Treat us like we have no brains and we’re sure to eventually act like it.
KP
It depends, most of the techies I work with are old hands and are real artisans. The stuff they are doing is almost always one of kind and destine for space. I never treat them with contempt. Most of my issues are with the young buck engineers involved with testing stuff and are building an experience base. They tend to worry about asking the older engineers questions (because the fear looking dumb) and not yet cognizant that the techs are like the petty officers in the military, they really know the ropes.
Lockheed got a whole mess of fresh faced graduates at my workplace several years ago. I saw one of the older engineers I’m chummy with leading them around one day. I took a rope and tied a bunch of handles in it so he could lead them like I see the daycare workers doing with the toddlers. Ken got the joke, all the new BSers, not so much.
Thank-you very much for this post, Seawriter. My wife and I are both astrophysicists who have written simulations and analysis software that others use, and we’ve struggled to come up with decent tutorials and instructions, since this is sort of a side line for us. I’ll read your post in detail and show it to her.
Well . . . I do contracting. If you (or anyone else reading this thread) ever needs a tech writer, private message me.
Seawriter
Eli Goldratt calls him the Herbie in The Goal. Putting the Herbie up front is good advice when hiking, producing, or testing.
I like this post. People often forget to build a proper “SOP for SOPs.”
FG,
I bet you could write a book on how everything but what works is done.
Someone beat me to it. [Non-CoC link]
It is nice to have a Kindle so people cannot judge the covers.
If it was not for the discourse topic in this book we would all have a lot less to say….Just saying.
Oddly, tech writer are among the worst offenders. I suspect one reason I was let go was because I kept thumping the drum about developing standards and procedures for the tech writing group I was in. How can you tell whether you are doing a good job or a bad job without standards? How do you know whether you have left something important out if without procedures and checklists? But it was too much work.
Seawriter
The “SOP for SOP’s” reminds me of my work.
We finally (after 10 years that I’ve been there) have one of our number partially dedicated to documenting standards of practice. It was originally intended to instruct contractors and improve the usability of the code they turn out; but it has improved the code we turn out as well.
No one likes to eat one’s own dog food.
If I can’t blind them with my brilliance, I baffle them with my [expletive] — The FG Dad
I’m writing a training manual for the kitchen. I say writing, but I’m mainly thinking about it. I think this series will be useful.
One of the harder things to account for is employee skill. As an example, I wrote a set of recipes for a luncheon.
My roll recipe was the list of ingredients, “Strait dough method” 8-10 minutes at 400 degrees. The baker I had wasn’t a baker, so I had to write it out more completely.
Regarding 2 on the list – you don’t realize just how much stuff you use until you set up the line without a checklist, and when you open you realize that you forgot knives. (Also working on a line checklist)
If you ever get your hands on an old McDonald’s Ops Manual, I think you’ll find it an excellent model. It covers some pretty sophisticated stuff — managers are expected to know how to deal with maintenance issues — in a straightforward manner.