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Subject:RE: meaning & practice of a "doc freeze" From:"walden miller" <wmiller -at- vidiom -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 8 Apr 2004 09:29:40 -0600
Does anyone out there use a "documentation freeze" approach in their doc
development/production strategy?
As many have already pointed out, doc freezes come in many degrees of slush.
In the companies I have worked for, I have used three types of doc freeze:
1. Content Freeze: non-substantive and non-organizational changes are
allowed. Basically this allows a copy-edit pass on a static doc. We did
this type of freeze for internal QA doc testing during development.
2. Review Freeze: This is essentially freezing a specific rev of the docs
to allow for review. When all reviews are in, you can either process the
reviews via change control or open of the gates for another round of writing
and editing. This type of freeze allows you to freeze sections, chapters,
etc. and continue writing/editing different parts of the document.
This freeze aspect of this is important for the reviewers. If you change
the document they are reviewing, they feel their reviews are somewhat
meaningless and are less apt to review your docs in the future.
3. Golden master Freeze: no changes allowed at all. Period. This is the
document that went out to the public and to the translators and no changes
were allowed. We created Errata if we found problems. We did this for a
large set of docs that were being translated into 3 languages (Japanese,
German, and French). Translators hate copy editing changes. Making word
choice changes or breaking up a tough sentence means re-translating
sections.
In my experience, only the Golden Master Freeze was ever honored for real
freezing. Content changes and editorial changes creep into the other two.
Software freezes are usually very slushy as well. I have often complained
of sw freezes that allow massive code changes. Whole libraries are added,
etc. We writers have the same problem. We just don't like to acknowledge it
as much. It takes discipline to freeze docs.
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