RE: Don't believe the offshore hype?

Subject: RE: Don't believe the offshore hype?
From: "John Posada" <JPosada -at- isogon -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 9 Mar 2004 18:22:33 -0500


>The English in the document is quite good. As
>a usable User Guide, however, the document is
>atrocious.

One of the weekly trade pubs that I particularly like is something
called "eWEEK, the Enterprise Newsweekly". It's small, I can fit it in
my jacket pocket, and it's weekly.

Anyway, they recently interviewed Vivel Paul, the Vice-Chairman of Wipro
Ltd (an Indian outsourcing company with 1 billion dollars/26,000
employees). In it, they ask him a question based on how they do what
they do:

"If you look at the way we do software development, you find a very
structured, process way of software development. It is rigorous and
repeatable. It is much more of a factory environment."

If you look at this quote, and relate it to Chuck's comment, they
relate.

In technical writing, the type of documentation that we equate to
quality documentation isn't a done in a factory environment. It's
one-off. That's why Chuck's observation of "a section for each, a
chapter for each, a page per heading, basically, that it is done
according to a formula. In this way, they can split a 200 page document
among 200 writers and each writer creates a self-contained and discreet
deliverable.

At my last gig (before here), we had an Indian-based company
onsite...about 30 people. Maybe slightly less. We gave them a section of
cubicles, about 4 isles of 8 cubes each. They set it up so there was a
supv at the end of each isle and he was responsible for divvying the
work. It was done in small chunks that could be done in a single shift.
At the end of the shift, the little chunk was handed in and in the
morning, a new piece was given out.

There was no inspiration, no "big idea", no vision, no insight.

Oh, yeah...delivery time came and they crashed.

John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
Isogon Corporation
http://www.isogon.com


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