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Another possibility is to create a secondary repository for the
documents. You'll keep all your up-to-date docs there. The
Sharepoint repository might just become, as it were, a sort
of write-only storage, as others find it less than useful.
It would be an interesting exercise to establish a wiki at your
outfit as well. If anyone grabs control of it, then of course all
activity on it will cease.
--Peter (what, me sneaky?) Neilson
Sean Brierley added:
> No, that's an unnecessarily layer of administrivia. The process should
> be inclusive, not exclusive. The process should help, not hinder for the
> purposes of building somebody a kingdom.
>
> I recommend you propose a change and lobby hard for the change.
>
> And, you can do a slew of changes and such, so that the system gets
> overwhelmed with a bunch of techwriter activity, so administering
> techwriter docs becomes a pain.
> -----Original Message-----
> A little background information first, if you please.
>
> The company that I work for uses Sharepoint to store documents. It uses
> it poorly, but uses it nonetheless.
>
> The company has your standard departments Development, Project
> Management, Business Integration, Architecture, etc. The sum total of
> the employees in those department is ~150.
>
> I was asked to assist a contracted resource in cleaning up our
> Sharepoint site. This included creating a document creation/approval
> process. So that I did.
>
> My plan was to load all of my document templates onto the Sharepoint
> site and allow all employees to create documents from within the site.
> So, for example, Ted from Development could create a document and, when
> he was satisfied with his draft, could click "Submit," which would
> forward the doc to his manager for approval or rewrite. When his
> manager clicked "Submit,"
> it would forward the document to me. I would act as the gatekeeper
> ensuring the accuracy of the doc, correct format, and whether or not the
> document had already been created. Once I was done with the doc, I
> would forward the doc to the respective project manager so that the
> document could be marked as completed in the project plan. Once the
> project manager was done with the doc, he would submit it to the
> appropriate business unit for (realistically) a rubber stamp approval,
> which would then cause the document to appear in the Sharepoint site.
>
> Unfortunately, this was shot down. The PMO changed the process so that
> all document templates and requests for new documents has to be approved
> by them. Once approved, all meetings that the tech writers conduct with
> SMEs has to be approved by them also. To top it off, once a tech writer
> submits a doc to the PMO, he or she gives up all control of that
> document, meaning that I only have read-only access to the documents
> that I created...unless special permission is granted.
>
> I understand that a project manager is responsible for the success of a
> project, but has anyone heard of a project management office seizing so
> much control over documentation?
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