I was asked to help out a colleague who’d got mired in an unsatisfactory project. A new system is being launched – new for some users, updated for others, and he’d been tasked with updating the online reference (called a ‘quick start guide’) from the old version of the system. That was essentially a help system created in HTML – screen shots with procedural instructions below.
He worked with one SME, produced 90-odd pages using the old format, and at the end, the project manager reviewed it, and passed it to a half dozen business training reps to review. He got a half dozen versions of ‘it needs to look more professional, it needs to look more wizzy, it should be more engaging’, plus ‘can we have a PDF version in addition?’ After a couple of attempts at doing what they wanted, but receiving no thumbs-up, he asked our manager to speak to the project manager. This person said ‘I don’t know exactly what I want, but this isn’t it.’ I was called in to support him and see if we could reach an agreement on a way forward, with only a week or so till the deadline.
