WhAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaat? Am I receiving a hard time? LOL! Actually, it's not my call. But I stand ready, willing, and eager to keep learning what I need to make it happen. And, if it doesn't get done, then, well, hakuna matata, but it will, someday.
Well, if we improve tech pubs, send writers to training, develop new and more efficient and accurate methods, we'll be better able to accommodate content and better able to deliver more better product. However, that's not the way management perceives tech pubs. It's a battle that many of you have probably never seen, but we've got a couple of VeePs who think nobody reads docs, so we shouldn't create them, docs should be outsourced to other countries, docs should resolve bugs in the product, product managers and project managers should be able to decide which writers and which tools get assigned to which projects, over the tech pubs group leader, and so on and so forth. I'm just happy to sit here and field calls from our own very expensive tech support engineers because they don't know the answer and they know I documented it and can provide the answer ... <grin>. I worked at a place where the product changed the day after GA. At that place, I had scripts down and could output press-ready PDF, online-delivery PDF, and online help within 45 minutes of being asked. Seriously, when the product changed the day after GA, to remove a broken feature and significantly revise an existing one, I got the content changed and had the deliverables within a couple of hours. I always finished my docs before development finished the product. And nobody cared. I went to London and spoke at WinWriters about the process I used, none of my bosses cared a whit. Here, the product changes after beta significantly, deadlines on every single product get pushed back a quarter, things often get descoped as well. For the last two major releases, our documentation was ready for press before the product CDs were ready to ship. I cannot stress enough the value of good documentation to a product line, and the value of a good tech pubs department to good documentation. However, management consistently views tech pubs as a cost center and overhead, and they tend not to invest in it. Anyhoo, good thoughts on software. Part of what we want is a mechanism for outputting FM via WWP to HTML that gets posted to this site for comment by developers as part of a review process. The nature of the site should permit developers to see each others' comments, which is actually a necessary part of the review because we have recently been getting 180-degree opposite opinions on items from SMEs. Lotsa stuff. Back to framescript for me today though. Cheers. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Char James-Tanny <snip> > Well, I kinda wanna figure it out myself. If I have some skilled, > educated, trained, experienced, and generally wonderful consultant do > it, then I don't learn nout. True...of course, you also don't learn the things that you'll need to do once and only once ;-) I appreciate your point. But this kinda sounds like "if I can't do it myself, then I don't want it done." Which is fine...but a bit self-defeating ;-) > Plus, remember, tech pubs is overhead. Whilst we might and have bring > in a contractor or consultant to author a deliverable for us, it's > doubtful we'd get the okay to spend money on improving tech pubs processes. If you improve tech pubs processes, do you also increase other things? Like time to delivery? Do you decrease things like basic costs required because no one knows who's doing what? I'm just asking :-) Anything I suggest will require time. But you can start by putting together a list of the features you need (maybe get a recorder so that you can say them while driving home), such as WYSIOP editor, user security, CMS, needs to include other apps like a blog or calendar (or can be a standalone wiki or blog). Once you know what you need, you can figure out which app will be best. (Check out a variety of sites to see what you like and don't like...Wikipedia, MSHelpWiki, WikiWackyWorld, any of our blogs, etc.) Then you can install by following the instructions at the appropriate website. (If, by any chance, Fantastico is running on your server, you can use it.) For the most part, once the software is installed, it's ready to use. It won't be customized, but that shouldn't be too big of an issue. The most you'll have to do is run some administrative things. DISCLAIMER: Important Notice ************************************************* This e-mail may contain information that is confidential, privileged or otherwise protected from disclosure. If you are not an intended recipient of this e-mail, do not duplicate or redistribute it by any means. Please delete it and any attachments and notify the sender that you have received it in error. 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