I agree with some, disagree with others, but for me this is critical, I see a lot of documents, many of which are bloated with irrelevant material to try and deliberately make them seem weightier than they are...
For example a technical design document that reasonably contained less than a page of technical information plus a couple of useful diagrams padded out to 10 pages with user requirements that had been cut and paste from the original requirements document.
The design may or may not have been good, but teasing it out from within vaguely familiar material wasn't worth the effort for most readers, so it gets ignored, the dev thinking they have consensus starts implementing and is suprised by the ensuing shit-storm.
An email or post-it with a single paragraph or bulleted list of "here's what I'm going to do" would have been more effective
For example a technical design document that reasonably contained less than a page of technical information plus a couple of useful diagrams padded out to 10 pages with user requirements that had been cut and paste from the original requirements document.
The design may or may not have been good, but teasing it out from within vaguely familiar material wasn't worth the effort for most readers, so it gets ignored, the dev thinking they have consensus starts implementing and is suprised by the ensuing shit-storm.
An email or post-it with a single paragraph or bulleted list of "here's what I'm going to do" would have been more effective