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I have actually 2x, as a contractor, been told I could NOT talk to the
developers in any way. They had too much work to do to answer questions -
even about how the help was connecting to the product. All my info about the
product came from working with it, reading marketing lit and hoping for the
best. I connected the help using Bughunter.
One project was a development tool that I could not use, because it required
stuff the docs group was not allowed to have - like root access to servers
on the network. I could and did mock it up, but I could not see if what I
did actually worked.
No specs, no notes, and no reviews. They were not great docs for either
project. I did the best I could and moved on. Some projects go just like
that. It was what the project manager wanted.
-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-techwr-l-71429 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
[mailto:bounce-techwr-l-71429 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com]On Behalf Of Gene
Kim-Eng
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2003 9:41 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Re: Responsibility, blame, managers, and getting the job done
I've actually had developers lock my writers *out* of the development
process,
including attending development team meetings, until a particular date,
saying
that things were "too fluid," and that "there won't be anything for you to
document until then," putting them in a position where it wouldn't be
possible for
any writer, no matter how good, to produce what our company at the time
considered a
"standard" document set.
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