The Importance of Rules

A recent meeting for Lockheed Technical Publications Personnel in Fort Worth had as its theme S1000D and the US Government and Industry Transition to this Specification. The meeting was well attended over two days. It was arranged and hosted by a superb team headed by Drex Rutledge, Director of Technical Publications at Lockheed Martin. This meeting was entitled a Consortium and all were encouraged to take part. There was a number of speakers who were actively involved in the guiding of the specification through the various hurdles both in the U.S. and Internationally.

Of particular interest was the attitude of the DoD allied speakers who made it very clear that they were waiting for the Business Rules to be written. One of the drivers for this decision was experience of other projects which were carried out to a Mil Spec but the data was not interchangeable because of the wide range of interpretations.

A few years ago I was involved in large project within the UK which had S1000D at it centre. The work was carried out by a number of contractors - there were no business rules - and it too suffered from a range of different interpretations.

Later, the UK introduced Business Rules as a central part of its Defence Standard 00-60 specification which included Technical Publications as a core part. Although general guidance was given as to what these rules should contain it was obvious that some of the writers had not had experience of actually creating publications. I hope that the US has more practical view on the purpose of these rules.