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RE: Issues with distribution of technical documents
Subject:RE: Issues with distribution of technical documents From:Berk/Devlin <armadill -at- earthlink -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 29 Jun 2001 14:15:40 -0700
On Thu, 28 Jun 2001 14:07:14 -0400, Roger Bell <RBell -at- OptioSoftware -dot- com> wrote:
>My company does NOT practice this, but one of my best friends works for a
>company that does. She told me that her upper level management doesn't want
>the documentation to be too good, or "no one will pay for technical
>support." I won't name the company out of respect for my friend.
I have sat in on high-level meetings at a number of companies where this was stated in exactly this way.
At one of these companies, the product for which we were deciding to NOT provide example code was an API, with NO GUI and seriously inadequate JavaDocs. What made this even more ironic was the fact that this company had already unsuccessfully spent three months looking to hire just one reasonably-priced Java programmer who could provide support. (They had been exclusively a hardware vendor before that, so they'd NEVER supported a software product, let alone a product for developers before.)
In my opinion, this kind of decision results from ignorance rather than thoughtful analysis. After another month or two or searching for just one cheap, well-spoken, experienced Java programmer to support this particular product, for which they were planning to charge $250/hour for support and make tons of $, I was granted permission to put code examples in.
On the other hand, I don't think it would be a bad thing if companies would start to realize that good documentation can be a source of profits for them. If companies valued documentation it might result in more careful scrutiny of documentation so -- better documentation and better recognition of good technical writers. Certainly having clients willing to pay for documentation would be one way to ensure it was valued.
Anyone else remember the bad old days of mainframes and minicomputers? When you bought one, you'd get just one set of printed docs for the machine. Since there might be many hundreds of users of these systems, most buyers would pay the big bucks for a few more sets.
--Emily
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~ Emily Berk ~
On the web at www.armadillosoft.com *** Armadillo Associates, Inc. ~
~ Project management, developer relations and ~
extremely-technical technical documentation that developers find useful.~
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