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>>Karen R. Casemier wrote:
1) Each developer only knows his specific piece of the software, and the
majority know very little about how it relates to the entire program as a
whole, and
2) Each developer knows the application from the back end - how the code
works - not from the front end, how the end user is going to work with the
software to complete his daily tasks.
This is more true in this new job than either of the 2.5 tech writing jobs I've had, probably because there are more developers and the program is much more complicated. It was reassuring to hear this, since it's what I've been saying a lot in this 3rd week here, but still leaves me in the same boat.
It's starting to come together, but still the basic difficulties are:
1) the package is very complicated, lots of bits and java apps, and it's taking a while to even figure out the pieces, much less the heirarchy/order they go in. This is also because there are about 3-5 names for everything (a very English feature, I'm afraid, tho also common in this biz) and _all_ the concepts and bits are complicated and not much that I've done before. It's also very much because of the two things Karen pointed out above.
2) the end users are scientists and researchers, making queries to get information that is highly specialized (genomics) and our SMEs haven't been able to give me example questions yet, as they will see the thing about 5 minutes before it goes for demo!!
Should be interesting...
I've always found this list very helpful, so here I am back again!
Thanks all, for the support, past present and future
Cayenne
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