Friday, July 12, 2013

PlanetLotus comes to the rescue and IBM documentation issues.


If you read my last post, you know I was trying to update CCM and Connections 4.5 . Needless to say I failed, because not being that familiar with Filenet myself, I followed the IBM instructions written in the technote I mentioned.
Thanks to PlanetLotus I found an excellent article form Klaus Bild, that explains in detail what is really needed in order to successfully perform an upgrade.
http://kbild.ch/2013/07/how-to-upgrade-connections-content-manager-to-cr1/

Now, I do not want to bash IBM, I worked there for almost 20 years but.... honestly most of the documentation IBM provides, expecially for upgrades, fixes, configurations is really bad. Is fine if you already know very well the products you are working with, otherwise not. I struggled with this also when I was an IBMer, and many of my colleagues still remember the discussion we had about documenting stuff. I am a fan of the "step-by-step" documentations, and Klaus article is an example of that.
I co-wrote two articles in the Connections wiki, at the time of LC3, providing a step-by-step guide, complete with screenshots, of how to install Connections 3 starting from scratch. And I remember I had to discuss with some people in IBM who said "there's no need for that, is all in the Infocenter"; now... how helpful is a document that says "for installation of product X ( Websphere, DB2, TDI, ...whatever is needed) refer to the product X infocenter". Jumping from a place to the other becomes a nightmare, so I convinced my colleagues that a single doc was needed.
Compare Klaus doc with the IBM technote.... I see there's still lots of room for improvement when it comes down to documentation for IBM.

Have your say!

4 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. I'm totally agree with this article, well done Rob

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  3. I agree with you Rob, we need crystal-clear, step-by-step, useful documentation.
    BTW, I did not know you are not an IBMer anymore... All the best!

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  4. Christian, i am working for a BP now, Factor-y, with several people you know. Daniele Vistalli, Matteo Bisi, Andrea Fontana.

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