The steepest part of the learning curve is right at the start
My working life revolves pretty much around Microsoft. Over 90% of my work is done in either SharePoint or Word.
Microsoft has a lot of information on their sites about these products. Unfortunately, I can never find it. I usually only know it’s there when I stumble on it months after I really needed to know it.
Their sites look good, and once I know what I am doing I can see that it also contains truly valuable information. The only problem is, when I don’t know what I am doing I have no idea how to actually use the information that is there.
The steepest part of the learning curve is at the start.
I really struggled with SharePoint until I learned one simple basic fact. There are two programs. Until I grasped that there were two programs, that one sat on top of the other, and that they both did slightly different things, I was forever trying to do things that wouldn’t work. For example, I read in the SharePoint Help, and in online forums, about how you could set document or list level security. I was using SPS 2003, and I tried and tried, and I could never do it. Because you couldn’t, in SPS 2003. All the instructions were for WSS, but because I had not yet grasped the two-program thing, I thought they were just talking about SharePoint as a whole.
Likewise with another program I use occasionally—DITA. DITA is an xml schema used for writing documentation. I’m fine with the concept of a schema. I know quite a lot about DITA now, and can write pretty much anything using DITA schemas now if I want to. But have you ever tried to set a DITA system up on your own PC? The DITA Open Toolkit gives you good information. They even tell you how to set it up and give you the files to download. Even so, I am still on that slipperly steep slope right at the start—how do I set it up on my system, what do I need to do to make it work?
A total beginner has different information needs to an experienced user. The experienced user needs exact technical detail about specific items. Point them to the right place and if it’s organised in any logical sequence they will find what they need.
The beginner doesn’t know the information exists, they don’t know where to look and they don’t even know what to look for. They need big picture stuff, but the things that trip them up are not even always about the system itself. With DITA, for me, it was setting DITA up to use. With SharePoint I knew more than enough about libraries and lists before I had any real knowledge of how to use them in the business. And, as I said, the two program thing was a big knowledge hurdle.