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Re: Defeating the evil that is Marketing <g> (Take II)
Subject:Re: Defeating the evil that is Marketing <g> (Take II) From:Peter Neilson <neilson -at- alltel -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 11 Nov 2004 00:35:29 -0500
There are a few things beyond what Geoff Hart wrote, such that a
"rational" approach to software development sometimes cannot work
at all, and we tech writers sometimes wind up with the blame for failure.
1. There is no product, but that's a secret. The idea is to manipulate
the stock price, up when the product is announced, and down when it's
discovered that the product is hot air. (I'm not kidding. I was
there, and a writer who reported to me was assigned to the "product".
"But it doesn't work!" she said. It didn't. Price went from 25 to 52
and back in a matter of weeks. Some people in the know must have made
some money. I didn't.)
2. The product must be first to market, but the planned date is not
good enough. Marketing management know that the competition know
the assumed release date. The actual release is earlier, and is
sprung on everyone, much to the surprise of engineering and (of
course) the tech writers. The docs are missing, and nobody can
figure out how to use the product (the alpha-test version has
now become FCS) but that's from having slowpoke tech writers.
3. The product sidesteps all the company's quality procedures and
is is released as a fait accompli. Perhaps someone at a high
level makes a deal to buy out a competitor who has a high-profile
product. "There's no real doc effort involved," said the marketing
guru behind this scheme. "You'll just cut and paste." (Again,
this really happened, and it was back when physical cutting and
pasting were required. The purchased product did \\not// have
computer files of the docs!) Trouble was, the original company's
name (and product name) was like "XYZ" and our company was like,
"Etoain Shrdlu Corporation." There was no space in the existing
copy into which one could paste the new product name. The missing
docs were the fault of the slowpoke tech writers, of course.
On Wed, 10 Nov 2004 21:00:22 -0500, Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca> wrote:
[Lots of good stuff, including:]
The reality is more complex. The correct shipping date is one that
lets the engineers develop a usable, safe, and stable product,
accompanied by good documentation, in time to meet the payroll.
It seems obvious that the only way to set such a date is for all
three of us (marketers, developers, and user advocates) to work
together to set an appropriate date that balances all three sets
of needs.
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