Re: Green Field !

[Me Too <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Congratulations. IF you are given the autonomy and
authority to really do the job. If not, John Posada is
right and the car behind those headlights is about to
do a number on you.

Before you do anything else, talk to the
managers/execs and get yourself officially plugged
into the project planning teams. Make sure you really
are in the pipeline for distribution of info about
design changes, project schedules, etc.

For version control, might as well just stick with
VSS. It does *everything* you need for documentation,
it's fairly simple and easy to use, and pretty well
known so if any problems do erupt, there's lots of
users who can provide advice. For version control,
avoid Perforce and Rational like the plague. They are
WAY more difficult to use and they do not one tiny
thing more for documentation - 99% of their "features"
are completely useless on binary files.

A more important thing for version control is getting
everyone else to agree to a standard file name
convention. I wasn't able to do that here, so the BAs
and PMs do their own 'versioning' by sticking their
own version numbers in the file names. I wind up with
the VSS database containing 7 different file names,
which sort of defeats the purpose of having a version
control system.

I recommend (if you can do it) setting up the VCS so
you are the only one with access to the area where
documents are kept. You can put a site on the company
intranet where other people can download the latest
versions of your docs - and of course keep the files
accessible there always up to date. That way everyone
can always get the latest thing quickly and easily,
but they can't get their hands on the working copies.
And of course, talk to the local webmaster/system
admin and make sure you're the only one who has
write/delete permissions on the intranet directory
where you put the distribution copies.

Good luck and have fun.


----------------

Keith Hood
Senior (only) tech writer
ACS, Inc.

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