poll question - improving a product

Subject: poll question - improving a product
From: Peter Neilson <neilson -at- alltel -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Sun, 21 Nov 2004 23:26:23 -0500


"Once or twice."

Not sure about software, but once I grabbed an applib book
that was about to go out and (because it was not on a release
schedule) held it back for a month while I fixed over 100 bugs
in it. I let it go when I got down to finding only one bug a
day. (I'd been using the draft copy for programming, which is
how I knew of the bugs.)

Of course when it came back from the printers I found about 200
more bugs in it. It seems that after I'd approved the blues,
someone in production had re-done all the pages, capitalizing
the name of the boolean datatype. Unfortunately the system was
case sensitive, and Boolean, while more handsome than boolean,
was wrong. We'd paid extra for changing all the blue pages,
paid extra to make them wrong! Penalty copy, or what!?!

Other than that, my suggestions have usually been moot, because
I don't get my hands on the product until after beta test. Once
in a while, though, someone in marketing wants the full, completed
doc set before user-interface design has been considered at all.
Doesn't mean anyone listens to me, though. Was Rodney Dangerfield
once a tech writer? Our discipline is a good approach to
developing a cynical sense of life.

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