I'm going to be honest with you: my minor in college was in technical documentation. I can wield a bullet point list like a turbocharged light saber at the slightest sign of trouble. But I must say that I've never, ever been in a shop that fell within acceptable parameters for product and process documentation. Either the documentation requirements were overreaching and cumbersome, and we ended up with documents that conformed to the rules, but weren't at all readable or helpful; or, the requirements were nil, and the halfhearted powerpoints and Word docs sitting abandoned out on Sharepoint were pathetically out of date.
I want to know what, if anything, is important to you as a DBA and developer. So answer me this:
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What's your stance on documentation? Love it, hate it, need it, avoid it?
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What (if anything) do you and your team document? Requirements, change requests, data dictionary, technical guide, user guide, help menus, testing, etc etc.
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What's the best or worst documentation experience you've had?
(Did you see that? See that fierce bullet point list?? Yowza!)
I rarely meet a soul who is actually enthusiastic about talking documentation, so I'm going to point the finger at a few people. I tag you, @SQLChicken, @BuckWoody, and @LadyRuna! Those who I didn't tag specifically: consider yourself tagged regardless.
Happy days,
Jen McCown
http://www.midnightdba.com
