Re: Survey Question

["Dana Worley" <dana -at- campbellsci -dot- com>]

On Wednesday, July 26, 2006, Diana Ost wrote: 

> How many of you have been asked to document a software application,
> but were not expected to need access to that software? 

Not once.

If someone did ask this of me, after I picked myself up off the floor 
from laughing so hard, I would tell them I will start writing the 
documentation when I have a version of the product in my hands I 
can play with.

No, it's not impossible to do, but I think you end up with much better 
documentation if the person writing about it is actually *using* it (I 
write datalogger hardware and software documentation, so I can do 
this. I know in some instances it would be impossible, such as when 
writing instructions for arming/disarming a warhead :) 

When I'm using the product and writing about it, there's an added 
bonus to the development team because I am also *testing* it. And 
because I am using it, there may be things I include in the 
documentation that are helpful to the user, which I would never had 
been able to pull from the design specs alone.

When you are documenting without the product in front of you, there 
is also the problem with the application changing out from under 
you. It seems to me there would be more work involved with going 
back and checking that the documentation jives with the real 
application, than getting it right the first time.

2 cents,

Dana W.

***************************
Dana Worley
Manager, Software Support Group
Campbell Scientific, Inc. 
Microsoft MVP, Windows Help 2003-2006


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