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Subject:RE: A technique to get on development's good side From:"Damien Braniff" <Damien -dot- Braniff -at- asg -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Mon, 16 May 2005 09:22:13 +0100
Too often TWers like to think of themselves as user advocates - I think
we are but we're not the only ones,
The aim of any company is to make money by selling their
products/services. Now unless you're so specialized that you're IT (and
user stuff doesn't matter!) there will be competition. To beat the
competition you need to (generalizing I know) either (or both!):
1 Cheaper than the competition (while still providing a usable
product)
2 Better than the competition (and can charge more)
To achieve this is (or should be!) a team effort- developers have to
design a product that can does what customers want (ideally easily!),
TWers have to provide suitable docs to go with it and marketing/sales
have to sell it. It's a team effort with EVERYONE focused on the 'user'
- if it's no good it won't sell (ideally!).
That's the ideal - there are all sorts of other factors involved that
come into play, for example time constraints, budget constraints etc.
It could be better if... but a release now will grab a big chunk of the
market that we can build on etc.
The User things seems to have been dumped on/taken up by TWers when
they're really only a cog (important cog!) in the system.
Damien
Damien Braniff | Technical Writer
damienb -at- asg -dot- com
Technical Communications
ASG | asg.com
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