[Originally appeared 1999.]
From time to time, I have written about the distinctions in tasks and skills that should exist between the staff who use Microsoft Word to write and produce documents and the staff who support and develop the Word environment. This and the following columns will describe those issues in detail for medium and large organizations. In those organizations, each of the roles described below may be staffed by different persons. Some of the skills may be best supported by outsourcing. There are lessons, however, for smaller organizations, or even individuals, in the divisions of responsibilities. The columns will develop that perspective as well.
No matter what the size of the organization, the ultimate measure of success with Microsoft Word is the experience of the end users. However trite that statement, it should never be forgotten as developers congratulate themselves on the elegance of their dialog box or programming code. For those who have worked directly with me, I acknowledge both the lapses and the need to obey that rule.
End users should be able to employ Microsoft Word to produce their organization’s standard documents with a minimum of effort devoted to formatting, troubleshooting or other distractions from getting the words (and images) right. The tools for accomplishing these tasks should be highly visible and accessible. End users should have available a set of templates, styles, AutoText, macros and other Microsoft Word tools that allow them to write documents in final form. Training should be centered on the tasks of producing those documents and using the appropriate tools to do the job.
This perspective on the experience of end users is critical to achieving the benefits that are supposed to accrue from computer usage, including efficiency, production speed, quality control and consistency. In (this year’s) consultant’s vocabulary, they enable reduced Total Costs of Ownership.
By these statements, I am not trying to argue that general users need not be sophisticated in their understanding of Microsoft Word, or that training should be “dumbed down.” In fact, we want a user community that understands precisely how Word works, so that they will embrace its most powerful features, such as thorough use of styles. We don’t want to burden end users with the responsibility for the development and presentation of those tools. We just want them to use them correctly.
Note in this discussion that I am not drawing a distinction between authors and secretaries. In many organizations (especially outside of traditional legal practice), authors have primary responsibility not only for the words in their documents, but their production as well. Secretaries may serve a number of authors, and have significant responsibilities besides producing documents. The title “secretary” is disappearing, replaced by “assistant.” In some markets, it can be very difficult to even hire secretaries. Given those developments, this orientation to the use and support for Microsoft Word has special force.
Let’s call the next level of responsibility and skill for Microsoft Word “master users.” These users have a thorough and deep understanding of the front end of Microsoft Word. They know all of the functions relevant to their organization outside of the Visual Basic Editor. No matter how well an organization develops its standard environment for Microsoft Word, there will be documents that require special handling and skill. In legal practice, for instance, public disclosure documents may incorporate a range of formatting and features far more complex than standard briefs or agreements. Assigning such tasks to master users allows greater quality control and ease of production, while avoiding significant frustration for users who haven’t mastered such functions.
Master users need to understand and manipulate features such as complex tables. They need to understand the intricacies of the division of documents into sections, with multiple headers and footers. They should understand fully the capabilities of styles, and know when special formatting requires new styles or direct formatting solutions. They should understand the use of fields, including cross reference and style reference fields. Where an organization’s documents require it, they should understand the full set of features for graphics and images. The skills for graphics production represent an even more specialized set of talents.
In the next column, we will look at the skills required for support and development.
This 1999 article originally appeared in Office Watch.Subscribe to Office Watch free at http://www.office-watch.com/.