TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
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".
---
Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
Version: 6.0.714 / Virus Database: 470 - Release Date: 7/2/2004
ROBOHELP X5: Featuring Word 2003 support, Content Management, Multi-Author
support, PDF and XML support and much more!
TRY IT TODAY at http://www.macromedia.com/go/techwrl
WEBWORKS FINALDRAFT: New! Document review system for Word and FrameMaker
authors. Automatic browser-based drafts with unlimited reviewers. Full
online discussions -- no Web server needed! http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.