Your development effort may span several months. You may schedule PERFECTIVE maintenance in cycles of one to six months. But, you may require CORRECTIVE maintenance within hours.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Functionally, you can divide documentation maintenance activities into three categories:

PERFECTIVE, ADAPTIVE, and CORRECTIVE.

Let me explain...

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

PERFECTIVE MAINTENANCE

"Perfective maintenance" is when you make changes, insertions, deletions, modifications, extensions, and enhancements to improve understandability or maintainability.

You generally do Perfective maintenance because you have new or changing requirements, or you may need to fine-tune documentation.

Fine-tuning is an excellent way to introduce a new writer to your documentation. This will reduce your chance of serious errors later.

Both failures and successes of your documentation require Perfective maintenance. If your documentation works well, users want more features; if your documentation works poorly, you must fix it.

When you perform Perfective maintenance on poorly written documentation, you can dramatically reduce resource requirements by making your documentation more maintainable.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

ADAPTIVE MAINTENANCE

"Adaptive Maintenance" is when you adapt documentation to changes in user environment. Environmental changes are normally beyond control of writer and consist mainly of changes to:

Rules, laws, and regulations that affect documentation. Typically you must quickly make these changes to meet dates established by rules and regulations.

Equipment configurations, such as, new computers, new terminals, local printers, etc. Usually, you want to take advantage of improved features and/or pricing. You normally perform this maintenance on a scheduled basis.

Data formats, file structures, etc. You may require extensive maintenance if these items were not properly designed and implemented. If you can isolate changes to specific modules, maintenance may have less impact. If not, effort can be both lengthy and costly.

System software, operating systems, compilers, utilities, etc. In these cases, you usually perform maintenance on a schedule.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

CORRECTIVE MAINTENANCE

"Corrective Maintenance" is when you must fix errors - sometimes immediately.

Generally, you'll find three types of errors:

Design errors.

These errors include incomplete or faulty design because of incorrect, incomplete, or unclear descriptions, or when writer does not fully understand user's needs.

Logic errors.

Often, logic errors occur when user instructions and/or unusual data combinations are not tested during development or maintenance. These errors, usually attributable to designer or previous maintainer, include invalid assumptions, tests, instructions, or conclusions, or faulty logic flow, and incorrect implementation.

Writing Errors.

The writer causes these errors. These errors include incorrect implementation or design logic, or incorrect use of special terms. While these errors may be result of negligence or carelessness, they are usually easiest to fix.

NOTE: Many managers consider maintenance to include changing specifications or adding new capabilities.

Fascinating stuff, eh?

============================================================ 5. Call to Action ============================================================

As I've said before, I'm a fanatic about documenting business processes.

Find out for yourself! You have nothing to lose.

Together, let's document what you want, how you want it, and when you want it. We will discuss various creative approaches before project begins.

Mike Hayden Principal/Consultant Your partner in streamlining business.

For instance, a critical battlefield of war are streets of Islamic world where hatred of America seems to be rampant. As long as masses of people hate America, as long as they continue to see American government as actual terrorist, our nation cannot bring this war to a just conclusion. Clearly, this isn't a command-and-control issue. People cannot be ordered to stop hating. We have to employ asymmetrical leadership. We have to motivate them — in other words, we must set up, through a variety of means, environment in which they motivate themselves to become our allies, in which they make choice to work along side us as full partners in concluding war. It will take a long, superhuman, multifaceted endeavor, an endeavor that cannot succeed without our employing asymmetrical leadership.

Asymmetrical leadership is action-based: Businesses faced with rapid, global change have come to understand that motivation isn't what people think or feel but what they physically do. A key aspect of how asymmetrical leadership views motivation lies in first two letters of that word. Those letters — "mo" — are also found in words "motion," "momentum," "motor," "mobile," etc. The words denote action — physical action. To engage in asymmetrical leadership, leaders must constantly be challenging others to take specific physical action across all dimensions that leads to results.

Our motivating people who hate us to ultimately become our partners in peace will entail not our simply paying lip-service to such a partnership. We must undertake concrete actions that will begin to establish motivational environment. Asymmetrical leadership demands that we and "they" ultimately take action together to redress many social, political, and military wrongs that breed hatred.

Asymmetrical leadership is results-driven: Businesses have discovered that in order to succeed in asymmetrical markets, their leaders and employees must have a passion to achieve results. After all, people who simply take action are useless to a business. Only those people who get results are useful. This seems like a simple enough dictum; any leader will say that they have a passion to get results. But I have found out that what most leaders have a passion for, whether they know it or not, is engaging in tradition, linear, captain-to-mate-to-crew leadership — either because they know no other way of leading or because they are more comfortable being engaged in such leadership. For such leadership has a materially different focus than asymmetrical leadership. Traditional leadership focuses on activities that get results; whereas asymmetrical leadership focuses on results that get activities. When you are leading organizations in asymmetrical markets, you must not be wedded to activities but instead to results and only to those activities that achieve those results. This means that if activities are not getting results, you change them or eliminate them and institute new activities. In organizations run by traditional leadership, changing activities means changing status quo, a vastly difficult job.

For instance, to get results in asymmetrical markets, many businesses have had to eliminate those traditional activities that achieve results and engage in new, innovative ways. They had to break up their linear lines of reporting. They've had to reduce tiers of leadership, they've had to downsize their staffs and decentralize their functions, they've had to institute just-in-time inventory systems, they've had to cultivate capability of quickly formulating and disbanding results-focused teams — all with one aim in mind: to get more results, faster results, and "more, faster" on a continual basis. In short, they have had to become masters of asymmetrical leadership.

America's new war demands new leadership. We don't have to invent this leadership. It already exists. With emergence of new, global markets, a corresponding new vision of leadership has been emerging with some businesses. Asymmetrical leadership is being developed and applied in crucible of global business competition. It is very kind of leadership that can and must be applied to all multi-faceted endeavors of asymmetrical war.

============================= 2005 © The Filson Leadership Group, Inc. All rights reserved.