This collection is compiled from personal and shared experiences as well as from antipatterns from the field of IT that appear directly or similarly in technical communication and its surroundings. They are in no particular order.

This collection does not fulfill any scientific requirements and is rather intended as a guide for practitioners. Some of those antipatterns you might use yourself, others you might encounter because others use them.

You probably came here from my talk at the tcworld conference in Nov 2023. Happy to see you here! If you have further questions or want to contribute, feel free to contact me!

(Also if you think this is REALLY helpful to you, send me a crate of your favorite beer :) )

Organisational Antipatterns

Scavenger

Documentation takes place only at the very end of the product development process. The doc team has no earlier possibilities to influence the product.

Even worse, in earlier steps (e.g. risk assessment, development of the user interface) it is even often pointed out that any problems could be solved later by placing a hint or a warning in the documentation.

Analysis Paralysis

In the planning phase, you try to do everything absolutely perfectly, and you over-analyse the situation without any real action. As a result, the project makes very little progress.

Vendor Lock-In

When selecting tools or aids, you commit to a manufacturer to which you are subsequently bound and to which you remain at their mercy. Often in connection with proprietary data formats, connections or spare parts. (Many Apple and Microsoft products are a good example).

Premature Optimization

You start working on a problem (e.g. proofreading, editing, reorganisation) before you are familiar with the entire document or product and have an overview of your task or the consequences of your actions.

Bikeshedding

Spending too much time on trivial decisions (e.g. decorative design elements).

This is fuelled by the fact that more people can contribute to simple questions than to specialist problems.

(Allegedly, the name stems from a situation in a city council where the decision to build a power plant was made within a few minutes, but afterwards people discussed at length about the color of the bike shed.)

Escalation of Commitment

Sticking to a decision once it has been made and defending it, even if it turns out to be less than ideal. Any doubt about the decision is interpreted as personal attack.

Mushroom Management

Keeping employees guessing and misinformed about decisions ("Keep them in the dark and feed them full of shit… and if one head rises above the others, cut it off"). Used because it supposedly secures the position of the manager.

Stovepipe or Silos

An organisation in which information can flow from top to bottom, but not horizontally between departments or teams.

Death March

To delay the point at which it becomes clear that a project has failed, employees are made to work on it night and day.

Groupthink

During meetings with collaborative planning, participants avoid bringing in critical points of view so as not to disturb the harmony.

Bystander Apathy

As an observer, you notice bugs or problems with a product – but decide not to do anything in order not tocause bigger consequences (e.g. because the deadline for changes has passed).

This antipattern is common in technical communication because we are usually the first people outside the development department to inspect a product.

Copy Folder Versioning

Copy folder versioning is an anti-pattern that occurs if insufficient tools are used. For new versions or variants of a document, the corresponding file or directory is copied and the copy is modified. The result is an unstructured mess of files and folders in which it is impossible to go back to an earlier version or track changes.

Frozen Caveman

The manager or the team is unwilling to learn new ideas and techniques. They are comfortable with the status quo, are afraid of change or have a reasonably well-running cash cow and therefore no pressure to change.

As a long-term result, the company loses its competitiveness and becomes inefficient and unattractive as an employer.

The Last 10% Trap

The final steps in finalising and publishing an information product are underestimated (like fine-tuning, formatting, conversion, etc.).

Shiny Toy

The idea that all current problems would be solved with a brand new tool that just entered the market.

(ChatGPT comes to mind…)

Confusion of Objectives

The personal goals of a manager are not congruent with those of his team or the organisation, but are prioritised in his decisions.

False Economy

Management does not properly calculate the consequential costs of cost-saving measures; perceived costs and actual costs differ. As a result, processes become tedious for everyone in order to achieve small cost savings.

Examples are purchasing processes for infrastructure or tools that are more fights than business processes.

Another example is to consider staff as running costs and burden them with tasks when they could be doing something more productive in their time.

Groundhog Day Project

Meetings are held regularly on a topic or project where the same issues are discussed over and over again. The meetings end with the conclusion that ‘something should be done’, leaving everyone with a warm feeling.

After a while, the meeting is repeated nearly word for word.

The causes are unclear project goals and task assignments as well as low priorities of the topics discussed.

Hero Culture

Anyone who stays in the office longer than their colleagues in the evening is considered a hero.

“Management by Numbers”

Measuring the success of a department/team solely on the basis of numbers that are hardly suitable as a metric for the effort involved (e.g. number of pages of documentation) and making decisions solely on the base of this number.

(If this sounds stupid to you, that's something which actually happens!)

Diluted Responsibility

For fundamental decisions, a group is assembled which is that large that the decisions can hardly be traced back to individual persons. Decisions are made on the basis of the lowest common denominator and are therefore lacking in courage.

Documentation Architecture

Spaghetti Manual

Directions that require you to look at other sets of instructions from time to time or switch back and forth between different instruction manuals.

One for All, All for One

Publish a single set of instructions that is suitable for all existing variants. Users have to find out for themselves whether a step is suitable for their own product or not. (Often in the automotive sector.)

Play Child

Use all the functions of your authoring tool to the extreme. The resulting topics, help books or other products are almost unmaintainable because of too many conditional texts, variables and other control elements.

Shotgun Surgery

A document structure where small changes in content require many minor adjustments in many different places ("operating out shotgun pellets").

Fort Knox

The documentation is locked behind a login barrier, or it takes otherwise a lot of effort to access it.

Boat Anchor

Planning ahead for hypothetical future expansions – and then desperately sticking to this planning even if the situation has changed.

Design by Committee

Many contributors to planning, but no common vision.

(Related to Diluted Responsibility)

Architecture by Implication

Decisions are not made explicitly, but everyone makes them ‘ad hoc’, on the assumption that colleagues will see the question in the same way. The result are inconsistencies because everyone brings their ‘own flavour’.

There are software projects where you can recognize on every part who designed it…

BDUF - Big Design Up Front

Create a complete detailed structure before the first line of text is written - inflexible to changes in the product development process or to insights that emerge during the working process.

Related to…

Speculative Generality

All sorts of eventualities are anticipated and provided for, leading to an inflated and unnecessarily complex structure.

Duct Tape Documentation

Always running after the current problem (or whoever shouts the loudest), no long-term planning or advance work.

This sometimes happens with service providers who only work somewhere for a short time.

Uncommunicative Name

Names or descriptions that don't provide any useful information about the content ("New Figure 1 edit_new.docx").

Golden Hammer

A tool or a way of working that is familiar and has been successful in the past is used without consideration for all tasks.

Copy & Paste

Copy and paste identical texts instead of integrating them from a central repository.

Because I Say So!

Instructions and warnings without a context or explanation as to why a certain activity should (not) be carried out. Users then no longer see any sense in the instructions.

Echoing

The first sentence after a headline repeates the headline itself. Example: Headline "How to do a thing", first line: "This page explains how to do a thing".

Overwarning

Warning against every conceivable and inconceivable danger. The idea behind this is to be able to prevent liability risks; however, the result is that really important warnings get lost in the mass of meaningless nonsense.

Information Diarrhea

Writing everything one knows or can think of about a topic, regardless of its relevance to the question at hand.

Cargo Cult

Copying parts of text from elsewhere into your own works without understanding why and how.

This often happens in security chapters when the author is unsure about the legal situation or when they see something "useful" elsewhere.

Magic Buttons

The explanation of an operating procedure mainly goes along the interface elements, without the reader being able to understand why he is doing what he does ("Press this button… then press that button… then do this… do that…").

Intellectual Violence

The reader is bombarded and intimidated with technical terms and specialist knowledge. They are forced into a role of inferiority and are discouraged from asking questions.

Gold Plating

Working on a project or task far beyond the point where further effort adds value.

Assumption Driven Documentation

Assumption that the users are just like the author and have the same knowledge and skills.

(As they say, bait the hook to suit the fish, not the fisherman.)

Broken Windows

Small problems that are not fixed show a state neglect. Discipline decreases and the problems multiply.

This principle is known in sociology as Broken Windows Theory (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory).

Feature Creep

A product is repeatedly extended at a later date, making it increasingly complex (often due to stakeholder requests).

Even if this antipattern rarely occurs within the documentation team itself, the team often has to react to this problem.

The Customers are Idiots/We are Idiots

Members of design teams believe that internal expertise in the field is an adequate substitute for customer surveys and that conducting customer research is a waste of time and dangerous… because customers are idiots.

Or: Members of design teams believe that internal expertise in the field is insufficient and every design decision has to be backed by customer validation.

Mind the trap! Antipatterns, a common type of problem in technical writing