Re: The last minute crunch

["Chuck Martin" <cm -at- writeforyou -dot- com>]

"Samuel Choy" <schoy -at- us -dot- ibm -dot- com> wrote in message news:211045 -at- techwr-l -dot-  -dot-  -dot- 
>
> Thanks John,
>
> What do I do those gazillion hours?  Things like last minute comments and
> requests from developers, "Say Sam, I just thought of this....."  Each one
> is small, but they all add up. They do know what they can ask me and when.
> For example, I won't usually redesign the entire book 30 seconds before
> it's due. Also, there's a bunch of back-end testing and processing I have
> to do to my html files. Actually, I could do those earlier in the cycle.
>
Do you have the power--and the backing of your manager--to say "No, I can't
fit that into the schedule." when some of these "little" requests come
about? Are your developers under the (all-too-common) illusion that becuase
it's "just" the docs, that their requests should be easy?

Once you get toward the end of a product cycle, what are you procedures for
product changes? Many places I've worked require that any such requests get
tracked, often in the bug database. "Bugs" that are actual feature requests
have to be scoped out and approved before they are implemented. And true
bugs have to be prioritized; not all bugs can always be fixed within the
scope of the project. Is there such a process there (I can hardly beleive
that there's not; "IBM" and "process" are synonyms), and if so, are the
developers going around that process, either because they think the issue is
so small or they believe that docs aren't part of the development process?

Chuck Martin