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I have worked for a number of companies in a consulting
role--including a Fortune 50 firm. Often, there were multiple groups
internally contending to have their particular project or solution
accepted. There are some incredible internal politics at work--and
these people never knew when someone who might hold a grudge would at
some point wind up working with them--or even worse, might become
their boss after one of their frequent re-orgs. (The particular
company I'm thinking of is somewhat notorious for regular
reorganizations--during the nearly seven years I worked with them they
had one per year, on average. Without saying any names, it had five
letters both beginning and ending in "X"...)
Thus, a consultant was often engaged to put the blame on an outsider
for anyone disgruntled because the solution they happened to back did
not win the day.
Quite often, projects I had could have been done in a small fraction
of the time except for the incredible requirements for meetings with
everyone and anyone. The major thing to be gained from this
experience--don't work on a flat fee basis!
Usually, the result of these assignments entailed a considerable
amount of documentation--which is where the tech writing came in.
David
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Free Software Documentation Project Web Cast: Covers developing Table of
Contents, Context IDs, and Index, as well as Doc-To-Help
2009 tips, tricks, and best practices. http://www.doctohelp.com/SuperPages/Webcasts/
Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/
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