4 ms·
While raising a daughter and also mentoring younger devs I've noticed their communication patterns online tend toward short and less polished. Short to me mean
by Communitivity 7y ago
While raising a daughter and also mentoring younger devs I've noticed their communication patterns online tend toward short and less polished.
Short to me means 1-2 sentences, even on platforms such as Slack, which is not limited to 140 characters (we have a family slack and slack bots). The sentences also tend towards brevity.
By unpolished I don't mean raw stream of thought, though I see that too. What I mean is that they may get one pass at polishing, but not the polish that's usually in a well crafted email.
These trends are most noticeable when the writing is a report, or a proposal.
When I'm doing an editing/review pass I like to check two basic things, 8WH [1][2][3] (variations have less questions, such as 5WH and 6WH) and the Heilmeier Catechism [4]. Both improve the quality a lot by themselves if present.
8WH is a mnemonic for a set of basic framing questions: Who? What? Where? Why? When? Whose? Which? For Whom? How? These questions are too ambiguous without contextualizing. For example if I was recommending a big equipment purchase:
* Who should the purchaser be?
* What needs to be purchased?
* Where will this equipment be used?
* Why does it need to be purchased? Why this make/model?
* When is it needed, and when does it need to be purchased by?
* Whose money will be used to pay for it?
* Which make and model is recommended?
* For Whom will the equipment be used?
* How will the purchase be confirmed, and tracked?
There's overlap, and sometimes some questions can be combined or eliminated, but when writing myself I try to do all of them first before consolidating.
The Heilmeier Catechism also has some overlap with 8WH, but is a useful set of questions on its own. The questions are geared to a pitch of some kind:
* What are you trying to do? Articulate your objectives using absolutely no jargon.
* How is it done today, and what are the limits of current practice?
* What is new in your approach and why do you think it will be successful?
* Who cares? If you are successful, what difference will it make?
* What are the risks?
* How much will it cost?
* How long will it take?
* What are the mid-term and final “exams” to check for success?
[1] https://oneminuteenglish.org/en/wh-questions/ https://oneminuteenglish.org/en/wh-questions/
[2] https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/a-simple-sure-fire-way-to-create-great-content-the-5-w-the-h/ https://premium.wpmudev.org/blog/a-simple-sure-fire-way-to-c...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws
[4] https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-catechism https://www.darpa.mil/work-with-us/heilmeier-catechism