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Quite a discussion on whether they're concrete or
cotton candy fluff.
<RANT>
So what happens if on April 15th the program manager
says, "June 1 is the drop dead date." Then on May 1
says, "Well, maybe June 10th is OK." Then on May 15th
says "We're not going to ship until July 1." Then on
June 10th says "Well, maybe we'll ship on July 10th.)
Then come July, the date slips again - and again.
Each time this "Program Manager" slipped his 'must be
done by date' the engineers that I am depending on to
get me the "final" version of their work for inclusion
in the manual also slipped their time frames and
everything went to hell in a hand basket from there.
Then we get all the 'stuff' into the manual and send
it around for review and approval. Everybody from
Legal to the design engineer signs off. We pdf the
Framemaker files and send them off to the printer for
proofs. The proofs come back and the "Program
Manager" wants several changes - that he had the
opportunity to present during the review process. OK,
we make the changes and re-pdf and get another
printers proof. Mr. Program Manager sees yet another
change he 'needs' to make. On the third iteration of
this fiasco, he has the invoice in his hand from the
printer and the purchase req. all filled out. The
printer is rushing the job because the PM >really<
wants to ship the manual ASAP. But the PM says "just
one more addition!" So I call the printer and
literally stop the press run so I can add the new
material and resend it to the printer.
I went through this long story for one very salient
point. IMO deadlines don't mean squat when the
program management keeps moving the goal posts and the
rest of the team breathes a sigh of relief, knowing
they have another XX days to get their portion
finished. And here we are, the poor TW waiting for
the engineers to finish so we can include 'stuff' in
the manual.
And not one of these "managers" recognizes that I have
to re-write the engineer-ese and validate my
translation with the originator to make sure that his
scribbles translated correctly.
And inevitably the question arises "why isn't the
manual done?" Gosh, maybe the TW is a slow typist?
It certainly can't be the PM kept moving the
"deadline" can it?
Meeting deadlines may be >>ONE<< way to measure TW
performance, but they're cotton candy fluff when they
keep changing and the needed material does not appear
in a timely fashion.
Since many on this list appear to be contractors or
work independently, meeting deadlines may be of
greater importance and a reasonable measure of
performance. But not in my recent experience. YMMV
and other standard disclaimers.
</RANT>
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