RE: Tracking revisions in online help? (Take II)

Subject: RE: Tracking revisions in online help? (Take II)
From: david -dot- locke -at- amd -dot- com
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 24 Aug 2001 12:55:33 -0500

Editors and lawyers are not QA testers. The things that have to pass with
the editors and lawyers have nothing to do with what QA seeks. I've seen QA
testers write up grammar errors pointed out by MS Word's Grammar Checker.
I've never seen QA testers complain about trademarks and claims.

The test plan that QA uses is pretty easy to satisfy. Does something that
looks like HTML Help appear when they click Help>Contents? That is the sum
total of QA's involvement with help. Add context-sensitivity. They can QA
this long before the editors and lawyers are finished with the text. I've
never worked anywhere that put time in the schedule for doc or doc QA. Doc
QA happened on pre-release versions of the content, because the QA tester's
were paid by the bug. It was just as easy for me to pencil whip all of it
after the editorial review. It took a day to clear out the bogus bugs in
track. A few redlines can turn into a huge number of bug reports. But, QA
was at it on a first draft long before the help was finished. QA has
absolutely no responsibility for editorial. It's helpful if they point out
glaring errors, but the editor will catch that. If you have a reliable
editor.

There are only two things that help can do to break the system. First, not
be present. Second, bring up the wrong topic. The second problem is
ultimately going to be a programmer using the wrong ID for the help button.
It will probably go deeper than that. The cause will be reuse and the
failure to uniquely identify the use case rather than the feature. I've had
programmers swear that they could not give me a unique ID. Never believe
that. There might not be enough time to write the appropriate code, but it
is not impossible to do. Of course, the product shipped. That said all that
anyone needs to know about QA and help. Help bugs are never enough to stop a
ship. The head product manager said as much at the last place I worked. It
was another writer's help. You should check your ID mappings long before
they are implemented in the code.

QA was an issue when my instructions were to write an incomplete help
system. They came back and told me stuff was missing, as if I didn't know
that. If you can't trust your project manager, why worry about QA. All of
those comments were dropped. Never believe a project manager that tells you
not to do a complete job. Of course, what is complete? Believe the
requirements document. Even here help was only tested for its existence not
its content.

One of the help systems I'm writing will be tested for more than existence.
They will look for the exact wording in the TOC. I'll probably have a
stroke.

Release notes suffer through even worse scheduling. QA never tested this
stuff. The writer did. And, when we burned it to a CD-ROM was the first time
it could be tested, because of the difference the way hard drives and CDs
are formatted. Relative HTML links that work on a hard drive don't work on a
CD. QA was not involved in this.

These days complete is defined as content on the day we go beta 1. It goes
out without editorial or legal review. Both of those have to be cleared
before we can go NDA or public. Complete used to be right before the GA
build. Final Help was never QAed. The writer couldn't change functionality
that late in the game. Text was changed right up until the last GA build.
The first one almost never went. It made for long days. But, at the end of
the day, you went home and slept for a week.

QAing final content is theory rather than the reality where I've worked. We
got close as we worked on our SEI CMM process maturity. Tiers are frozen for
a very long time. The frozen stuff is final. The last tier won't be final
until the day the product ships. But, the last tier was the least risky part
of the product. At least, it wasn't the GUI, which seems to be the last
thing done these days.

David




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