RE: Organizational structure - where does Doc sit?

[Kim Roper <kim -dot- roper -at- vitana -dot- com>]

Mike wrote:

"That's great, and much the way I work at my current company, but what does 
it have to do with the department you're in? If your manager were the VP of 
marketing, would you stop finding bugs or UI problems in the product? Would 
you magically stop finding things overlooked by others on the project?"

Funny you should ask.  I spent the past three years as the Lone Technical
Writer in a Marketing Department.  I found that 1) my manager often
encouraged me to look the other way because I was there to write Marketing
material, not find bugs in the products, and 2) my product feedback usually
ended up lowest on the priority list because it came from outside of the
engineering departments, and it was from (ick) *Marketing.*

Because I had to write around the bugs and get product information from the
engineers, things probably would have worked more smoothly if I had been in
one of the Engineering departments and supplied documents to Marketing.  

"I'll stand by my original post: it doesn't matter which department you're 
in, as long as they don't interfere with doing your job correctly. If you 
answer to accounting, you still have to talk to the developers and QA 
people to do your job (if you're documenting software, anyway). If your 
manager prevents that, your problem is the manager, not where you fall in 
the org chart."

It isn't just the manager; it can be the perception of the other
department(s) as well, especially if you get caught in a disagreement
between two managers.  The disagreement itself is bad enough, but the
fallout is that it can sour relations between the departments.

Cheers ... Kim
kim -dot- roper -at- vitana -dot- com