Re: 'Old fashioned' Tech Writers

Subject: Re: 'Old fashioned' Tech Writers
From: "Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 12 Jul 2004 07:14:29 -0700


I didn't, but I will. There are times when developers just go off on
tangents and produce builds with added features that nobody ever
put into the product spec, and which don't contribute to the product
marketing plan. Supporting these features means expending time
for product documentation, preparing training materials for both
external customers and internal product support people (i.e., call
center folk). Even the support effort you already planned for can
be impacted, if the "new feature" draws in customers from outside
your target market who lack the default understanding your planned-
for customers were going to have and end up consuming more
support resources per user. All of these need to be weighed against
the potential ROI. Obviously, it would be better if someone made
the decision to kill the extraneous, out-of-scope features, but it
just doesn't always happen, and so most every SW product contains
some feature or another that isn't in its docs or online help and is
unacknowedged by its technical support if you ask about it.

Gene Kim-Eng



"TechComm Dood" <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote in message
news:243949 -at- techwr-l -dot- -dot- -dot-
>
> No one ever said "don't document features".




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References:
Re: 'Old fashioned' Tech Writers: From: stevefjong
Re: 'Old fashioned' Tech Writers: From: TechComm Dood
Re: 'Old fashioned' Tech Writers: From: T.W. Smith
Re: 'Old fashioned' Tech Writers: From: TechComm Dood

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