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Re: Hi-Tech Company Hasn't Used Tech Writers in Years
Subject:Re: Hi-Tech Company Hasn't Used Tech Writers in Years From:Peter Neilson <neilson -at- alltel -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sun, 26 Oct 2003 19:45:50 -0500
Gene is right on the money, only it's "worse" than that. If the company
works as I think it does, it gets paid for each iteration of the project.
Hence there is no motivation for anyone to find fundamental flaws in the
design early-on. If any bright person discovers a way to "save money"
by short-circuiting the normal military-contract scheme he gets pushed
aside or out the door.
Here's a concrete example. The Navy asks for a design of a concrete boat.
The specs include a hole in the bottom to let the water out. The delivered
design must include that hole. It doesn't help to point out that it won't
float. That's the Navy's job. Besides, if the contractor DID mention that
the hole was an error, they would not get the next-phase contract, which is
(of course) to design a boat with a smaller but more efficient hole.
Oh, and the quality of the documentation for the project is often measured
by weight. I'm not kidding. If it feels too light to the Captain or Admiral
or whoever, it's not substantial enough.
A friend worked as a "tech writer" for one of these major contract companies,
and her full-time job was to reformat the output from DEC Standard Runoff
(DSR) so that it matched Mil Spec #xxx. She was not to correct spelling
errors, and was especially not to question any of the engineering concepts.
That was years ago. Ghhod, I hope she has a better job now!
On Sat, 25 Oct 2003 18:10:04 -0700, Gene Kim-Eng <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> wrote:
Actually, it does in the context of a DoD contract. As George has
previously explained, the deliverables of such contracts are spelled
out very early on, and the contractor is not getting graded on the
quality of documentation, only on whether it contains all the required
elements. Expending additional resources to make the documents
"better" will not ever lead to additional sales due to enhanced user satisfaction, so none of the usual arguements that support improved documentation quality apply. Producing the "best" documentation possible is not the goal, all that is needed is documentation that is "good enough" to satisfy the CDRL (contract data requirements list), and documentation that consumes additional company resources to go beyond those requirements eats directly into the profits on a fixed-price contract. That would most likely be what constituted
"too good" in the eyes of that manager, documentation that was
perceived as being "gold-plated," with the gold coming from the company's profits.
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