February 2021
Juggling your business requirements Part 1
Juggling your business requirements using standards
Most of us will recognise this kind of juggling in one form or another at the workplace. There are business requirements to take into account on top of our daily regular workload. Just getting the work done is not enough. There are various considerations, such as time-to-market, or, as the case may be, downtime. Of course, we are all forced to cut corners and save costs wherever possible. At the same time, we want to be less dependent on a specific supplier. This means a continuous juggling game where we are going to try and keep everything in balance, to get our projects finalised, on-time, within budget, with the right quality, and without any further compromises. We want to be able to do the work or get the work done our way.
Of course, we are all forced to cut corners and save costs wherever possible.
ASD-STE100 Simplified Technical English is a guideline that regulates the wording and writing style used in technical publications. Simplified Technical English used to be known as Simplified English and the official name is this wonderful acronym ASD-STE100, and all three mean the same.
We are talking about the standard based on practical experiences over the past 15 years in many different industries. Seeing how this international standard helps to make the creation and management of global documentation a little bit less of a headache. We would like to share our experiences in the field of Simplified Technical English implementation with you.
Documentation always kicks in when the product is already late, when we are already over budget for the product lifecycle..
To engineers, it makes a lot of sense to use standards whenever possible in order to achieve similar results. Yet surprisingly, in the documentation field, it still happens that standards are not highly regarded. We are not talking about technical writers or documentation managers. We all know about the importance of documentation, and the importance of standards to support their documentation. However, upper management and those people who basically sit on our budgets and who make the decisions for us, do not always have the same kind of regard for documentation that we know is very well deserved, and very much necessary. Actually, in this respect, the European Union for once deserves some credit in that it actually specifically states in its regulations that documentation is an integral part of your product.
Documentation is a very essential item, yet it always comes at the last moment. Documentation always kicks in when the product is already late, when we are already over budget for the product lifecycle and we just need to cut corners or are expected to cut corners. However, we still want to stand behind what we do and make sure we provide a quality product.
Juggling your business requirements Part 2
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