Being in the software industry, I often have to write documents. Often, the documents I write are requirements documents or test plans but other times, they’re just for passing on information.
When I was still learning the art and science of software, I read an interesting book called “Introduction to the Personal Software Process”. It introduced me to a whole selection of great ways to increase quality.
Now, I don’t know if you have any formal method of review for your documents. Maybe you do, maybe you don’t. I don’t want to go in to the details of why you should review documents; it’s important to review your documents! Instead, I want to talk about how to improve those reviews.
Back to the book, Introduction to the Personal Software Process: one thing it taught me was to examine my mistakes and look for them in any new work. The idea here is that we’re all different and we all make mistakes but not the same mistakes!
The way it works is that as you do your review, you keep count of each type of mistake you make. Once you’ve finished, just count the number of mistakes of each type. Then, choose two or three types of mistakes and look for those in the next document you write. After a while, you’ll improve and find there are other types of mistakes that you can work on.
So, try it yourself. Take a look at your next document, whether it’s a document under change control or just for informational purposes, and look for your common mistakes. Try building it in to a checklist; I found it helped me!
Anyway, as usual, your millage may vary but have a think and give it a go. Let me know how it works for you, I’d be interested to hear about your experiences.
Kind Regards
Glenn
