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Our department (tech writers) uses a documentation plan (copy available on the
techwhirler site) which states very plainly that reviews are part of the
documentation portion of the project, that in order to guarantee a quality
document the SMEs must make themselves available both to contribute information
and to review drafts, and that members of the project team must factor time for
these tasks into the project. The appropriate managers, project leaders, and
analysts must sign off on the documentation plan.
By stating these requirements at the beginning of the project, and requiring
sign-offs before proceeding, we avoid a lot of hassles and misunderstandings.
This doesn't magically give anyone more hours in the day or days in the week,
but it alerts the project team that documentation takes time, and not just that
of the writer.
We designed the documentation plan to be similar in some ways to the project
initiation and project objective documents which must be created and approved
before work can begin on a project. Using the plan has, we think, increased
understanding of and respect for our role in projects. This approach could be
modified for a lone writer, a department of our size (6), or a huge writing
staff.
Jo
--
Jo Baer
Senior Technical Writer
TCF National Bank
Minneapolis, Minnesota
jbaer -at- mailbox1 -dot- tcfbank -dot- com
Weakness Through Strength
Fanatics may defend a point of view
so strongly as to prove it can't be true.
Piet Hein
Wade Courtney wrote:
<snip>
> One idea I have been toying with is starting a Documentation Review Team.
> Find just one person in each relevant department, the person should have a
> clear understanding of what is required of them i.e. review schedule. There
> should also be a commitment from the individual to do this for you.
>
> For instance my team would be one person from each of these departments:
>
> Engineering (actually two people one for the front end and one for the
> backend)
> Operations
> Prof. Services
> Marketing.
>
> That would about cover it.
>
> Wade
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A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
three and a half days of immersion in the state of the art:
IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
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