Maruthi Prasanna

       Every Page is Page One is still a nascent idea in Technical Writing. It encompasses everything; structured authoring, topic-based writing, information mapping, and minimalism. Most documents I aim to author in the future will be smaller in size and still independent. It will be a unit in itself, and almost every page is a unit in itself. The document will have very few external dependencies. Any variables used in it will be local variables and not global variables. Richly linked with suggested topics, books, and articles, it will be a part of the whole and still independent. Every page is page one (EPPO) topic aims to allow readers to read in any order beginning from anywhere. It is easy to gather feedback and measure the usefulness of an EPPO topic. Imagine that you have 1000 page document and the customer is not happy, and it will be difficult for you to figure out the source of this unhappiness. EPPO is Just like the Agile methodology. It allows you to fail in a small way wh

     There are several branches in Technical Writing. Some Technical Writers work in R&D and created technical documents. Some Technical Writers work with marketing and deliver product datasheets, brochures, and other marketing manuals. Some of the Technical Writers work on the e-Learning side and develop learning content for the product. A technical document can also serve as learning material and marketing material if it covers the end-to-end scenario of using the product or a product feature. It must try to cover all the use cases with some real-life examples. People want to scan through technical manuals rather than read them. Task-based writing and applying the principles of information mapping certainly helps in the same, but the document is less effective the bulkier it is. Users will find it harder to look for the information, and the information scattered here and there without any emphasis on the usage scenarios will not help either. Though you have comprehensive document

     Be quick in identifying the people who spoil a workplace and find a way around them to survive in an organization. They are the people who try to make other people worthless. They consider themselves superior and everyone else inferior to them. They never hesitate to backbite and make negative remarks about others. They do damage to the company but quite often go undetected for a long time. They pretend to work 24x7 and pretend to be concerned about work like no one else does, and they create fake emergencies and generate huge volumes of unnecessary work. Victims of bullies/jerks lose their creativity and problem-solving skills and indulge in laborious mechanical tasks as a reprieve. People spend more hours in the office, but productivity lags. People will be afraid of asking questions, fearing retaliation and ridicule. Very soon, the work environment turns toxic. Jerks create and promote many people who are like them and gradually establish total grip. They weed out all those who

     Why do some people fail even after working very hard? I believe they follow their instinct than follow a plan or reason. Unplanned tasks take substantially longer to accomplish than the planned tasks. You are among the overworked lot if you have worked on a couple of ad-hoc/on-the-fly jobs in a day, and the stress from it can affect several days to come. You will work at a sustained pace and still accomplish more if you are working on planned tasks. Unplanned tasks can throw your day off gear. You will be in firefighter mode in the house on fire parlance; the house is on fire, and you are trying very hard to put off the fire. You end up suffering some damage even if you can put off the fire. The fire can kill the person trying to put off the fire. Unplanned tasks are the real cause of job stress and burnout. Roughly ten years ago, a new revolution started sweeping across the software industry. A lot of product companies started implementing Agile methodology. The touted new idea i

     For years and years, I have attended countless number idle team meetings. Sometimes they happen to be recurring meetings without a clear agenda. Generally, I carried a notebook and pencil for the team meeting, and most members did the same as not doing so will look impolite. Someone asked to take the meeting notes will ping the members even after the meeting to help recount the discussion. It is harder to timebox a discussion and measure the outcomes this way. A good plan will make the meeting more effective. It also helps maintain the focus. Identify what you need to do before, during, and after the meeting. The one conducting the meeting should track the tasks against each person in an Excel spreadsheet or a Confluence page. Mark the progress of the tasks during the meeting with inputs from the members. If we need to discuss individual contributions, we can have a PowerPoint presentation with one slide for each member. The same approach can work for discussing new updates and fe