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Playing Hot Potato With The Integration Responsibility
Subject:Playing Hot Potato With The Integration Responsibility From:Tony Markos <ajmarkos -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 24 Nov 2004 08:15:08 -0800 (PST)
Bonnie:
Software development is often a very sly game. A ways
back I read an article in the STC magazine that talked
about a situation that I have often faced: If the
development staff creates very primitively designed
software, and then demands user friendly end-user
documentation from the TW, what is happening is that a
major part of - or THE major part of - the integration
responsibility (i.e., responsibility for making
logical sense of the product) - is being "pawned off"
onto the TW.
The developers could only barely make logical sense of
the system requirements - thats why the software is so
primitive. So management determines that the "quick
fix" is for the TW to create great documentation that
makes the primitive software usable.
This playing "hot potato" with the integration
responsibility is not ethical. Your right, the
developers are supposed to come up with such
understanding and then give it to the TW. They make
more money and they should do the harder work. But I
have found that, if you want fair, you have go to the
state capital. (The fair is typically held once a
year at the state capital.)
But you are not the designer of the system; you're a
person who's documenting it. It would seem that the
designers are the ones who would get negative
feedback, not the person who's just codifying the
decisions made by the professional design engineers.
Tony Markos:
Think of the case of Data Flow Diagrams being used
for a Business Process Reengineering (BPR) project.
If you can imagine the fears that a BPR project
typically brings to entrenched workers, then you can
imagine the political skills necessary for the person
charged with creating the diagrams.
The same fears have to be delt with in using DFDs
in a tech comm project - although it may be harder to
envision. Therefore, the same political skills are
necessary.
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