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Back in my project management days I always allowed 4 weeks between the code
release date (when it was burnt to a CD master) and the documentation
completion date. Without that period I could never get the documentation to
match the software 100% (ie. screenshots, steps, descriptions, etc).
Then again, I always told management the release date to the duplicators was
the end date of the documentation - not the code finish date.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pam Mandel" <pmandel -at- nimble -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 06, 2000 9:44 AM
Subject: Content Complete
> I'm the new manager of the Tech Writing team in a software startup. We're
> putting together version 1.0 of our product now. We've been fiercely
> scheduling for the last several months - I've met with the writers, the
> program managers, the dev leads, the writers again, and we've got
tentative
> dates for our documentation schedule. The docs schedule is now linked in
to
> the engineering schedule, and voila, we're scheduled. Fictionally, anyway.
> So here's my question. I'm striving for a content complete date - when
we're
> all done writing, except to fix bugs. Currently the overall schedule shows
> us as content complete one week before we burn the product to disk. We've
> got about a month between the code freeze and the docs freeze. This makes
me
> nervous. Does this seem like a reasonable amount of time to finish up?
> There's no test time for the docs if we finish up a week before we burn.
Is
> this a pretty typical scenario for content complete? I imagine we'll just
> have to suck it up and order a lot of take out in that last month, but I'd
> like to mitigate where possible. I don't want my team to hate me when this
> is over.
> Advice?
> Thanks.
>
> Pam
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