TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:RE: Quality docs (was Re value etc) From:"Susan Ahrenhold" <sahrenhold -at- winspc -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 28 Nov 2000 10:35:34 -0500
>>Some time ago now things were very quiet on the TW front here so I
>>decided to add a few strings to my bow and went back to college to study
>>quality (ISO 9000 etc) and something one of the lecturers said really
>>stuck in my mind.
>>Basically he said that most people didn't understand the issuel. He
>>said there were standards for hardness of steel etc but that ISO9000
>>(the thing everyone had to have!) wasn't about quality at all but was a
>>Management System that dealt with consistency. You document what you DO,
>>then look at how it can be improved and document that and repeat. It's
>>a process of change toward better quality. If you have ISO 9000 and
>>produce crap then all it means is that you'll consistently produce crap.
Yabbut! ...
The killer is when you produce crap in one batch, and then produce quality
steel in the next, and then crap again.
If you have a process in place, at least you know what you did to get bad
stuff, and you can fix it.
Hopefully, manufacturing processes do their bad work in rollout and testing,
and then have a consistent standard they can manufacture to when the bugs
have been worked out.
If everything we do is a custom job, we stay in the "cottage industry"
approach that everything has to be a customized job, and we never reach the
place where we are seeing any mass production cost-cutting. Let's face it,
one Windows print dialog is "a great deal" like any other Windows print
dialog.
I know that I can copy and customize from another project, but wouldn't it
be nice to never have this problem on my plate at all, relying instead on
the knowledge that this is taken care of outside my realm of responsibility?
Now, I don't work in that kind of shop right now [we're small and have only
two sets of manuals, one derived from the other] but I have, and I liked it.
The downside of this approach was what happened to the car industry in the
latter part of the last century, when American car manufacturers could coast
with poor quality, because they had no competition. That's when the Japanese
quality machine whupped 'em. Now Americans have the same manufacturing
processes, but they've built a lot more quality control into the entire
process, and cars are just BETTER.
Now, I'm getting out of this debate, because I have a feeling this is a
free-fire zone
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Develop HTML-based Help with Macromedia Dreamweaver! (STC Discount.)
**NEW DATE/LOCATION!** January 16-17, 2001, New York, NY. http://www.weisner.com/training/dreamweaver_help.htm or 800-646-9989.
Sponsored by SOLUTIONS, Conferences and Seminars for Communicators
Publications Management Clinic, TECH*COMM 2001 Conference, and more http://www.SolutionsEvents.com or 800-448-4230
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
