Reviewers who don't review

[Dana Worley]

On Monday, July 31, 2006, Gene Kim-Eng wrote: 

> Nobody is "untouchable."  That's why if all the guerilla review tactics
> don't get results the final solution (in some environments it might be
> the first thing to do) is to let the product manager (actually, as I
> described it, the entire team) know that the documentation for the
> product is pretty much done but it's not getting released because it
> hasn't been properly reviewed and/ or verified and the reviewers and
> testers have become the critical path to product delivery and
> everybody's on-time completion bonuses. 

Interesting discussion, assuming you actually have someone to 
review your documents.

I have never had anyone do a formal review of my documents (help 
files and manuals). It used to *really* bother me when I first started 
working here, but I got over it :)  The only reviews I get are when 
someone is actually using the documentation to get something 
done. Occasionally, someone will contact me about a potential 
issue, I'll check it out, and correct where necessary. 

I have a soap box ready to stand on in our next management 
meeting. I needed to look something up last week on one of our 
newer dataloggers (released in June), so I went to the manual. The 
manual is still marked *preliminary* and is quite incomplete. I was 
astounded that the product manager would actually let it go out the 
door like that (and that it's still like that!) -- we certainly don't do that 
on the software side of things. So, Gene, your final solution above 
falls on its face in this case ;)  

Oh, to live in a perfect world :)

Dana W.



 ***************************
Dana Worley
Manager, Software Support Group
Campbell Scientific, Inc. 
Microsoft MVP, Windows Help 2003-2006