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Bill Swallow wrote:
>I've seen this "trend" occurring for a couple of years now. The
>"trend" is mainly due to a blind move to outsource without fully
>comprehending the costs involved. In some cases it made sense, and in
>others it was more overhead than a savings.
I find this article interesting mainly because I've witnessed the "blind
move to outsource" over the last five years: lose a developer/writer in
the UK or US, hire their replacement somewhere else (usually India or
China). From a writers' point of view it certainly seemed to be more
overhead than saving, judging by the amount of time I spent on
international calls while attached to NetMeeting, trying to talk a
confused writer through the intricacies of structured Frame...
Peter Neilson wrote:
>At the same company some of the products were
>developed and *documented* in England. The resulting
>docs were "professional" from an academic point of
>view. They were thorough and dense, avoided slang,
>and made effective use of the passive voice. Excuse
>me: "They were written to be thorough and dense, they
>were constructed to avoid any hint of nonstandard
>English, and their writing style was carefully chosen
>to make full use of the passive forms of the verb that
>are to be found in the repertoire of any skilled
>writer." They were also unusable.
>Development and documentation were henceforth done
>mostly in the US.
This I also find interesting, because as a UK-based writer who has
worked for several US parent companies, I've had *exactly* the same
issue with documentation written in the US (yes, right down to the full
use of the passive form; "unusable" was generally considered to be an
understatement). It highlights that wherever in the world your
developers or writers are, the development process only has a chance of
being truly effective with clearly defined requirements, communications,
and training. An established style guide also helps...
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