RE: Technical Documentation solutions?

Subject: RE: Technical Documentation solutions?
From: "Sean Brierley" <sbri -at- haestad -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 14:06:30 -0400


That's fine. Am having some honest disagreement with you, is all. It's
an interesting thread and am looking to learn a few things--maybe change
my opinion some.

This last reply seems different than some of the other discussion. I
look forward to seeing what other discussion happens and how your work
turns out. Yes, I'm skeptical (and opinionated) but, no offense
intended.

The nitty-gritty bottom line is, for me, your plan to implement this
without including technical writers (who will use the content you
propose to create), without adding any burden to the engineers,
analysts, and team leaders, in a way that the content automatically
updates itself all the way up the document chain, in a way that is self
sufficient, and in a way that has you leaving in 6 months, seems
fantastic. Certainly, your further plan to have this used as a company
model across UPS is outside the scope of your time . . ..

Cheers,

Sean

-----------------------------------------
Sean Brierley
Software Documentation Specialist
Haestad Methods
http://www.haestad.com
203-805-0572 (voice)
203-597-1488 (fax)

-----Original Message-----
From: Manley Clifford (GFD1CEM) [mailto:GFD1CEM -at- ups -dot- com]

Let's not pick words too carefully in this discussion, Sean. I have
worked
with tech writers who have my 100% respect - many of them, in fact. I
respect my peers and enjoy my place in the profession.
I am not proposing that tech writers do not have a valid, in fact vital,
role to play in any team.
What I am saying is that it is silly for a coder to try to explain his
change to a writer, who is supposed to interperet his meaning and go
forth
and update all relevant documentation - this is and should be the
coder/analyst/engineers role - to document their work at the low level,
and
we should automate as much of this process as is practical/possible.

-----Original Message-----
From: Sean Brierley [mailto:sbri -at- haestad -dot- com]

While I appreciate the questions and thoughts, and desire, I disagree
with
your assessment of documentation and tech writers as a whole. I disagree
that you can have programmers and other SMEs do documentation and that
such
documentation chore would be something they wanted to do and something
that
did not affect their schedule. I disagree that there are not technical
writers out there who are capable of writing about code, or APIs, and
the
like.

<snip>


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