Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I *love* being a member of the Lone Writers Special Interest Group of the Society for Technical Communication (STC). Someone always has something neat to contribute, and in amongst all the helpful suggestions and discussions, there are the occasional gems of reference material… like these shared by one of the members last week:

• The Software Development Life Cycle (PDF): An excellent 22 page summary of the various methodologies, as well as a detailed—but easy to read—description of the Waterfall methodology.
• Glossary of Software Engineering Terms (PDF): From the same company as the SLDC document above. 28 pages.

I’ve put them here to share, but also so I have a central place where I can refer to them again (yes, I know I could use Del.icio.us, but I don’t—it’s just another place I’d have to remember to look for my ‘stuff’!)

Someone on one of my technical writing lists posted a link to an unofficial user guide for a piece of software used to report building maintenance issues at the University of Pennsylvania. From reading this guide, it is clear that this software is far from user friendly. Called “The Legend of FacilityFocus“, this underground guide for students is written as though logging a maintenance issue is part of a role-playing game. For example:

This [software] provides wonderful new functions for automation and integration and tracking — but from the point of view of a College House resident trying to get a light-switch fixed or a sink unclogged, the … web interface is not exactly user-friendly.

In fact, you can win only if you know which screens to visit in which order, which fields to fill out and which to ignore, which secret codes to use, and so on.

… [later] OK, you might think that since you want to request work, you should click “Work Request”. But DON’T! That will lead you off into a series of twisty little passages, all alike, where you’ll be eaten by goblins.

Go on, read it – it only takes a couple of minutes.