CIS 524 Study of System Documentation Essay

Respond to the colleagues’ posts regarding:

“System Documentation” Please respond to the following:

• Ray and Jason have just finished developing the documentation for a system your team recently completed. Ray insists that the documentation should be printed in booklet format and included with the system. Jason insists that paper manuals are outdated and that the documentation should only be distributed electronically via DVD.

Compare and contrast the use of online documentation and paper documentation. Then, make a decision about what documentation you will provide with your system and explain it to Ray and Jason.

• Debate whether or not to give credit to authors and designers of training manuals. Support your argument.

NM’s post states the following:

I must agree with Jason paper is out dated.  Now days, most businesses are turning towards document control/management systems to eliminate paper. It is best to put documentation in a secure place electronically on a server not a DVD or USB drive because they have a tendency of walking away.

Having paper copies can take up valuable space, is prone to getting damaged and becoming unreadable.  Paper copies are harder to share the document with others at a different location.   It is harder to make changes and adjustments to a paper copy; with electronic documentation, changes can be made easier and the changes can be shared.  Paper copies cost to deliver.

Electronic documentation makes storing of documents more efficient.  The cost to deliver an electronic document is cheaper. With electronic documents, you can perform faster searches to a specific item needed versus having to read until you find what you are looking for.  Electronic documents are more difficult to destroy because they can be backed up.

While paper documents can be destroyed by flood, fire and also paper can deteriorate over time possibly making document unreadable or hard to read.

With electronic documents you can have document collaboration which makes access and sharing easy.  Electronic documents can be changed and updates can be made much faster and easier and you can simplify edits and revisions much easier.

Lastly, electronic documentation can protect the environment by reducing waste!

https://www2.seas.gwu.edu/~shmuel/WORK/Differences/The%20Difference%20between%20Electronic%20and%20Paper%20Documents.html

http://www.locisolutions.com/blog/7-disadvantages-paper-based-document-management

• Debate whether or not to give credit to authors and designers of training manuals. Support your argument.

I feel authors and designers of training manuals should definitely get credit because they have taken their valuable time and performed through research using knowledge and experience to produce a product that others can use and gain knowledge from.

Writing training and user manuals take great skill and can be extremely difficult to make understand to your audience. A great user manual educates people about product features, while teaching them how to use these features effectively. As an author, your ultimate goal is comprehension. You want readers to easily be able to read, reference, and absorb information.

I feel designing of training manuals is very intense.  You have to be prepared to write in active voice and be consistent with tone and style of writing (I am horrible at that). You have to be a GREAT writer and possess GREAT skills to break down topics for various audiences to read, understand and comprehend.

A writer has to know the objectives, identify their audience, create modules and/or chapters and make smooth transitions from one to the next, structure the lessons, perform usability testing, develop an assessment portion, possibly incorporate labs, questions, practice lessons and exercises, feedback, make the training manual easy to read, interesting and visually appealing to not bore your audience.

I can document but no way do I possess the writing skills to create manuals and training manuals.

This link provides some guidelines how to write a good manual

https://www.dozuki.com/blog/2017/01/12/how-to-write-a-user-manual

Reference

https://www.cio.com/article/3307441/rewrite-or-rebuild-5-legacy-system-upgrade-considerations.html

CIS 524 Discussion 2 post responses.

Respond to the colleagues’ posts regarding:

“Online Communities” Please respond to the following:

• Evaluate online tutorials and online communities in regard to helping users. Create an argument for the approach you find to be the most effective and explain why.
• From the e-Activity, evaluate at least two sites or tools for developing end user documentation. Discuss the abilities the sites or tools provide and how the sites or tools aid in the creation of user documentation. Make a suggestion to improve the site or tool.

JN’s post states the following:

I’ve had the pleasure to take part in both online tutorials as well as online communities to enhance knowledge and skills. The largest difference between the two are that the online tutorial will help to build the foundational knowledge necessary to learn an activity.

Online sites such as CBT Nuggets is a great resource to learn various Information Technology topics dealing with the “how something works” like cisco networking and preparing for a certification.

As a member of (ISC)2 you have the ability to join the online community which is available to discuss current trends in information security. It’s a great resource for networking and learning from other individuals around the globe.

Two web-sites that offer the ability to generate end user documentation similar to Help Doc are the following: (1) Paligo, and (2) DR Explain.

Paligo is a multi-user interface that allows several contributors to work on a user document at the same time, it lets users check out certain portions to notify others that it is being worked, it provides simple formatting editing and “user” views along the way.

Paligo also offers a programmatic management view and allows for simple project management of the generation of the documentation, milestones can be inserted, reviewed, marked complete, and give realistic time lines to completion and delivery. DR Explain is very similar to both Help Doc and also Paligo, the largest difference is that it must be an “on-premise” deployment and management.

This means the management of the system and interface is in the hands of the organisation, as opposed to the web-site/company. This adds overhead to the deployment of such a tool and should be taken into account when it comes to the total cost of ownership.

Without the ability to easily get a quote and understand the price model, from initial overview of the tools, Paligo is on top as the company manages the code and updates and all the organisation needs to do is setup an account. The largest concern for this would be that a company is placing its Intellectual Property (IP) in the hands of another, so ensure legal is on board and proper agreements are in place is the IP is extremely valuable.

-John Sources: https://paligo.net/product/ – Paligo https://www.drexplain.com/write_documentation/ – Dr. Explain https://www.cbtnuggets.com – Online Training Resource – “CBT Nuggets”

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