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Subject:Validating manuals - PART II From:Michelle Vina-Baltsas <Michelle_Vina-Baltsas -at- datascope -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Thu, 12 Apr 2007 10:28:39 -0400
Thanks to all who responded to my post. I want to clarify that QA is not
only validating that all the functionality is documented in the manual
based on the UI, they are also validating that the UI requirement was
interpreted correctly by the writer (that would be me). So, if the UI says
the XYZ button should be blue, and the Ops book says it will be green,
that's would be an issue. However you slice it, it's a lot of extra work
for me!
Is there a smart way to do this? Does anyone have to do anything like this
for their QA departments or am I the only UNLUCKY soul. Maybe I can
suggest that they just validate that the UI document table of contents be
captured in the Ops book rather than every single requirement.
stevefjong -at- comcast -dot- net
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Subject
RE: Validating manuals
Michelle Vina-Baltsas wrote:
>
> > My company QA department wants to begin validating our
> > operating instructions against the software user interface
> > (UI) documents . I use FrameMaker 7.0 (unstructured) to
> > create the manual and am using conditional text to manually
> > trace the UI tags to the specific sentences/passages in the
> > FrameMaker file. This is very time consuming and tedious.
> > Does anyone have to do this type of tracing to a UI or to
> > another document type? If so, how are you doing it?
I think what you are describing is essentially a very thorough index. That
does have value, of course, but I also think that rather than verifying
that every UI feature is mentioned in the documentation, a much better use
of QA's time for all concerned would be to validate that the statements in
the documentation, and especially the procedures, are correct.
-- Steve
Steven Jong ("Typo? What tpyo?")
Past President, STC Boston Chapter
stevefjong -at- comcast -dot- net, 978-413-2553 [C]
* I am a candidate for STC Director | For more info, visit:
www.StevenJong.net *
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