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Andrew generously shared his knowledge and experience with us about working
with a product that has endless changes throughout the product life cycle.
I agree with all of Andrew's advice, most particularly "Write to reality."
(In my mind, I call it "document what you see") This is a touchstone for all
of us. Remember, if you don't do this, you're writing fiction. It can be
fun, but it isn't our job. ; )
I'd add one more point. Make sure people understand the impact of what
Andrew describes in his statement: "Honestly, we do close to 75% of our work
in the closing days of a project. We wait until things settle then blaze
through it fast."
This is what we run into all the time on our projects, too. But we make sure
the team knows that this means that there will be times that documentation
holds up the release of a product. Sometimes we cannot get all the final
changes in and the docs production/release ready when changes occur up until
the end. At our company, that's okay, and the team (and our manager)
understands. Other places (I hear) aren't so eager to admit this dependency.
Thanks for starting this interesting thread, Andrew. I'm eager to see what
other people contribute.
Lydia : )
__________________
Lydia Wong
Technical Writer
FarPoint Technologies, Inc.
www.fpoint.com
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