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Another place this pops up is documentation for processes in a business -- this could be a process for onboarding or compliance rituals or (hopefully not) deplo
by shoo 4y ago
Another place this pops up is documentation for processes in a business -- this could be a process for onboarding or compliance rituals or (hopefully not) deployment. Perhaps a business group has a process that is taught to new individuals who join the group through shadowing or song or dance, it is part of the folklore and rich and vibrant spoken cultural tradition of the group, but has never been written down. Then someone attempts to document it, and the result is confusing.
What if the process documentation isn't confusing and stupid because the author is bad at explaining things - what if the process documentation is stupid because the process is stupid and needs to be changed.
Another approach to this kind of thing is to reverse the sequence of "do it", "document it" steps and draft a rough version of the documentation up-front as part of an initial design, while it is cheaper to change the process or system, before work is done to implement it and roll it out.
- hinkley 4y agoI sat with two teams that had SEI process forced on them, and both of them had their sabres out before the proponent even opened their mouth. Both groups fell into child-like glee when it was explained to them that SEI level 1 involves writing down your current process as it actually exists. Which meant they got to describe the dumb stuff they'd been putting up with for years, with various degrees of tongue-in-cheek humor, satire, and sarcasm. - Send boss email - wait 2 hours for reply - bug boss about email - find out IT Guy already left for the day - Resume process in the morning Things like that, and a good time was had by all.
- shoo 4y agoIn regulated environments there are potential disadvantages to documenting the current adhoc process in all its glorious confusion -- we may be audited to see if how the group operates in practice adheres to the letter of the documented process. If the culture is particularly compliance-oriented, then perhaps we end up "I'm sorry, to comply with our documented process, we can't proceed to step 5 until after the IT guy has returned to work. Since he's still at work today we'd better pause until he clocks off then returns tomorrow".
- atom_arranger 4y agoWhat you talk about last is referred to as documentation driven development or readme driven development I think it's great for greenfield work. Forget existing solutions, if you were looking for a solution, write out how you'd ideally like it to work, after it's written, figure out if you can create something that works like that