Re: Measurable objectives?

[John Garison <john -at- garisons -dot- com>]

In an ideal world, yes. In actuality, not so much.

Granted, I'm speaking from a startup mentality. John's subsequent post 
went into details about larger efforts and the necessity for keeping all 
related groups and projects apprised of progress and so forth, all of 
which I agree with. Another illustration of why smaller companies are 
more responsive (and usually more fun).

But back to the small world scenario. The same thing never happens 
twice, so developing a process that depends on specific inputs and 
actions and so forth is almost useless. At one end of the scale you can 
get larger truths written down, but they sound like this:

   * Marketing commits to a deliverable to a customer in exchange the
     the money that will pay our salaries at the end of the quarter.
   * Development determines the minimum amount that they have to do to
     meet the deliverable in time for the deadline.
   * Documentation figures out what they have create, revise, and
     remove by the deadline,.
   * QA figures out how late they have to work the week before the
     deadline to get the code tested and maybe glance at the doc.


Now, as to what constitutes the "Documentation figures out what they 
have create, revise, and remove by the deadline" portion - that's what 
they pay me the big bucks for. That, and sitting in development meetings 
to get the scoop on what they're planning on doing, telling them what is 
out of the question to document by the deadline,  hounding the 
developers for information, getting my hands on each days build to see 
what's new and changed, and developing docs that reflect the reality of 
it all.

I love it.


My 2¢,

John Garison

(Who can tell he'd enjoy working with Elizabeth)


John Posada wrote: