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RE: gaining control of a dysfunctional environment?
Subject:RE: gaining control of a dysfunctional environment? From:"Kevin Amery" <kevin -dot- amery -at- sympatico -dot- ca> To:<techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 14 Jun 2006 18:36:38 -0400
I was in a similar situation for about 4 years, although my "job" was tech
support / software testing rather than TW (I put job in quotes because the
company was small enough and chaotic enough that everyone did at least a
little of everything at some stage or other). In my case, the biggest
challenge was that the product / project manager thought his responsibility
was to come up with an endless string of new features, evangelise them to
the public immediately (often before even telling the dev team about them)
then demand that they be implemented right away. Developers would often get
3 or more "top priorities" in one week. Features would normally be worked on
until they could be demo'd, then the developer would be yanked to start on a
new feature. Customers said they loved the new ideas, but of course wouldn't
buy the current version because a) those new features weren't ready, and b)
the old features weren't ready either.
The owner of the company thought the PM walked on water, so he certainly
wasn't going to enforce order - or if he did, it would be the PM's version
of order. And the PM refused to listen to anyone else - he was convinced
that in order to justify his existence every major decision had to be an
idea he had come up with.
Naturally, this situation was unsustainable, and last year the company
collapsed. Like you, though, myself and everyone else kept pushing to try to
get it to work, because we believed in the product's potential and each
other. So we all ended up riding the Titanic into the iceberg.
Given my experience with this, I would ask yourself if even your very best
efforts would actually help improve the situation. In reading between the
lines, it sounds like there's lot more rotten in the state of Denmark here
than the documentation. One of the things that the other tech support guy in
my company pointed out to me was that whether or not we kept our jobs
ultimately did not depend on how well we did them - providing top notch
support for a product that simply doesn't work won't generate revenue, and
providing top notch testing results won't help if the developers aren't
assigned to actually fix what you find. Documentation tends to fall into the
same boat, unfortunately - a good manual for an unfinished product will not
sell copies, as much as we'd like to think otherwise.
Until next time....
Kevin Amery
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Contact Lisa lisa -at- techwr-l -dot- com with questions.
I'm hoping for some advice on how to address a systemic problem at work. I
am the only tech writer in a small company, where the people are generally
well intentioned (and less political than in previous work experiences).
However, their work processes are nonexistent and they cause themselves
innumerable problems on a regular basis. I realize I should probably seek
new employment, but I'd like to give it my best effort before giving up.
The company's s/w dev process---and each group's responsibilities in that
process---are poorly understood/identified. The overall project management
for our s/w products is generally terrible (in spite of our having separate
BA and PM functions). Lastly, regarding documentation, you won't be
surprised to hear it's tough for me to do my job, particularly with any
amount of quality. The whole function is misunderstood here, and despite my
efforts and the quality of my work (which many people have responded
positively to), I've been unable to establish a basic documentation process.
To explain the dynamics briefly, I report to the DEV manager.
Although a good guy, his comments/actions reflect he thinks TW is simply a
desktop publishing task---DEV will give me info and I am to make it
presentable for clients. His personality is to manage based on how things
(should) work, unless someone can convince him otherwise (but he can't
understand 'analytical' personalities at all, which I am). When out of his
element, he seems to rely on instinct. I often step up and pose the
necessary questions, etc., but he keeps telling me 'it's not your job to
manage documentation,' resolve issues, etc.
But of course, no one is. My boss's personality utterly baffles me (the
opposite of what I think of as scientific and logical). Although he's not
unintelligent.
***My question is: people on techwr-l occasionally mention they use their
role to impose structure and processes in their companies, so they can do
their job. How exactly? What's the secret? What am I doing wrong?***
(Sigh) . . . Feeling useless and tired
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