Hi folks,
We’ve had a string of bad weather recently, so my kids and I have been spending a bit of time indoors.
True, but either way, my daughter and I recently engaged in several intense rounds of Battleship. After some cautionary looks from my wife that seemed to say “don’t be a jerk – stop trying so hard to win against an eight-year-old child”, I kicked back, abandoned my density-based hunting algorithm, and let my mind wander.
One of the interesting things about Battleship is that the board pieces have no offensive power. So while it may seem like your aircraft carrier or battleship should be your most powerful pieces, they’re actually your most vulnerable because their large size makes them easier to detect. The smallest piece – the destroyer – only takes up two squares and is often the last piece to be found by an opponent.
We face similar situations at work as well. The larger our work product, the bigger the target.
Much of our work product manifests as program documentation. In our collaborative environment, we give others the chance to comment on new process and program documents that we’re preparing for release. And as a result, we’ve all felt the pain of seemingly endless review cycles and torrents of barely relevant comments.
We often bring this pain upon ourselves. To make our documents as thorough as possible, we include tons of detail and address all related topics. But instead of a tight, concise document that addresses the core issue, we’re left with a sprawling tome encompassing all things security. That’s a big target for stakeholders who want their voice to be heard through their comments.
We’ve talked in the past about using straightforward language. And while that helps, we also need to pursue shorter, smaller documents. The leaner our documents, the more limited and relevant the feedback we receive, and the faster we’re able to make fixes and move on. There’s lots of advice online about writing concisely, but most of it focuses on the sentence or paragraph level. That’s important, but so is the choice of topics to include. The more topics, the more content, and the bigger the target. The more narrow the scope, the more concise the document, and the smaller the target. Hemingway liked this approach.
Rex