How to approach this task?

Subject: How to approach this task?
From: "Guy K. Haas" <guy -at- hiskeyboard -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 03 Feb 2005 11:57:48 -0800


Well, gang (particularly, I think, John Posada), I'm looking for insights....

I interviewed for a position this morning that was outside my historical scope and wondered how some of you would go about doing the job.

The software company (bought up a year ago by one the aggregator-type companies) has a website in which some of the infrastructure code goes back as much as 4 years. It has little or no documentation. What the IT group needs is someone to come in and organize/orchestrate the info and business processes involved in getting stuff onto the site. Customer support, bug reporting/tracking system, all the things a modern software company site should have.

They are growing rapidly, and some of the necessary information is recorded only in the minds of IT staff. They do have a wiki, but even that apparently has major navigational issues.

My background is in documenting programming languages, their related tools, and APIs -- addressing the programmer audience, but the CUSTOMER programmer. This task's audience is in house. When new people come on board, there is no set of documentation, help screens, written procedures for them -- they have to learn from the existing staff.

How do you go about mining and organizing such material?

--
Guy K. Haas
guy -at- hiskeyboard -dot- com | gkhaas -at- usa -dot- net
http://swexegete.typepad.com/GuysBlog
Software Exegete in Silicon Valley


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