RE: The End Of Technical Writing

[eric -dot- dunn -at- ca -dot- transport -dot- bombardier -dot- com]

bounce-techwr-l-106467 -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com wrote on 10/28/2004 04:55:08 PM:
> You're talking a significant beast here. I'm not sure how 
> the 25 million is relevant to the writing task nor what it encompassed, 
> so it's a bit of a red herring. Plus your DFDs are really insignificant 
to 
> the rest of the project. Seeing as the project already had a huge 
> "analysis" phase, you've simply continued the corporate culture.
> It allows you to do analysis as a separate step.

Wow. I came across as a little harsh there, didn't I. An off-list response 
referred to it in unkind terms.

All I meant is that yes, if 25 million was spent on what I will assume is 
the engineering or design analysis, there's no reason not to expect a 
significant amount of analysis of the resulting data to produce user 
documentation. I didn't mean to sound like I was saying the DFDs were 
insignificant only that the time spend on them was insignificant compared 
to the rest of the project and certainly understandable.

I'd be wary of a techwriter that didn't spend a week or more learning the 
systems and familiarising themselves with existing documents and analysis 
before proceeding.

I doubt however that the re-analysis was doing it "correct" and the 
original analysis was a complete failure. Unless the claim is that the 
original 25 million was spent on user task analysis.

I also doubt how far 6 days of diagramming would have progressed without 
the previous outlay and effort towards analysis.

This all goes to show why these discussions don't seem to fit what you 
seem to desire Tony. I have yet to be able to determine EXACTLY what it is 
that your project was about, nor what field it is in, nor what environment 
or expectations you were working under. Without a common point of 
comparison between list members situations and requirements it's very 
difficult to have a meaningful discussion.

Unless you're simply looking for adoration and self aggrandisement, you're 
going to have to tell us more about the project, the requirements, the 
users, the hurdles that you had to overcome ....

Eric L. Dunn
Senior Technical Writer

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