“Here’s the main policy manual we’ve put together over the years for system user
ID: 3584987 • Letter: #
Question
“Here’s the main policy manual we’ve put together over the years for system users,” says Al Bookbinder, as he blows the dust off the manual and hands it to you. Al is a document keeper for the systems department of Prechter and Gumbel, a large manufacturer of health and beauty aids. “Everything any user of any part of the system needs to know is in what I call the Blue Book. I mean it’s chockablock with policies. It’s so big, I’m the only one with a complete copy. It costs too much to reproduce it.” You thank Al and take the manual with you. When you read through it, you are astonished at what it contains. Most pages begin with a message such as: “This page supersedes page 23.1 in manual Vol. II. Discard previous inserts; do not use.”
1. List your observations about the frequency of use of the Blue Book.
2. How user friendly are the updates in the manual? Write a sentence explaining your answer.
3. Write a paragraph commenting on the wisdom of having all-important policies for all systems users in one book.
4. Suggest a solution that incorporates the use of online policy manuals for some users.
Explanation / Answer
1. According to my observation the blue book manual is not used much frequently. Since the line in the paragraph states that "he blows of the dust off the manual." This line shows that the manual is not referred by many users.
2. In my view the updates are not at all user friendly as quoted in the paragraph " This page supercedes page 23.1 in manual Vol.II." This means the user has to search for the second volume of the manual then go to page no 23.1 which i suppose is a very long and time consuming process.
3. It is a good thing to have all the policies written in one book since many users work on the system, some migth be well conversent with the system while some migth be using it for the first time,so different users face different problems specially when they are new to the system. Putting up all the policies and rules and knowledge about the system n one book will help the user to find the solution by referring the book rather moving from on euser to another asking tons of questions.
4. Well making a handwritten or printed manual as softcopy is a cumbursome task but it reuires just one time effort, if some person or even a team of people takes the scan of the complete manual then it can emailed to all the system users and the users can reffer to the manual as and when required rathe than moving from one page to another reading a hardcopy.
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