Re: Technical Documentation solutions?

Subject: Re: Technical Documentation solutions?
From: Andrew Plato <gilliankitty -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 27 Aug 2002 14:13:33 -0700 (PDT)


"Manley Clifford (GFD1CEM)" wrote...

> One thing I failed to make clear is that my responsibility, my mission, if
> you will, is to get this team, six engineers, three analysts, two team leads
> and one manager happy and up to speed; able to produce and maintain a total
> of perhaps twenty documents. None of the docs are complex, most of the data
> that goes into the docs is available from various online sources to be
> pulled into my scheme.

So why don't you do it? If its so damn easy, why aren't you doing it and then
delivering something of REAL VALUE to your team? Why this nonsense of building
some central repository.

I'd agree with those that say, you're not going to get engineers and managers to
write documents. They don't care about that shit. And presumably, they hired you
to write the docs, not design a better mousetrap.

> I mentioned that this prototype might become of interest to the enterprise
> because I believe it will - I believe that we can show UPS a team that
> produces their own documentation without having to hire tech writers or
> outside resources (OH BLASPHEMY!!!!! DID HE JUST SAY THAT??!! And without
> undue distraction from the individual's "real" job.

I believe it won't. When managers find out they need to write docs, you can
expect instantaneous dismissal of your project. People, by and large, loathe
writing anything down. And just because you build some mammoth single-sourced,
database driven system, doesn't mean people will use it.

Andrew Plato

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