Creating a Documentation Department

["Dallas Trainer" <las_inbox -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

Hello, I've checked the techwr-l archives and surfed the web, and I've found 
some info regarding setting up a documentation department, but I'm wondering 
if some of you can point me to some additional helpful material in this 
area.

In about a week, I will be starting as lead tech writer at a company with a 
product that has customers but no user documentation. My group will be small 
(myself and maybe two other tech writers), and we will be tasked with 
creating user manuals, online help (Robohelp), and eventually, Camtasia- or 
Captivate-based tutorials for remote users of the product.  Obviously, this 
won't all happen overnight.

I am being tasked with taking the lead in getting the department on its 
feet. I will be talking to management to determine the priorities, as far as 
media, which pieces of the product are most in need of immediate 
documentation, and so on.

As I've been a tech writer before, but not tasked with starting a department 
from scratch, I am looking for things I don't have in my toolkit, such as:

1)  Formulas, or practical guidelines, for determining how much time to 
allocate to learning about the product; coming up with manual, online, and 
other templates; coming up with a style guide; and so on.

I think I'll need to be able to present some sort of rough departmental 
"roll-out" timeline to management, so that they don't come in with 
unrealistic expectations. Right now, I don't actually know what a reasonable 
timeline might be. For example, assuming there are three of us, and that the 
product is not some behemoth of epic proportions, what should we reasonably 
expect to deliver by end of, say, Q1? Q2? Guidelines that will help me start 
estimating this would would be greatly appreciated!

2) Good templates for manuals. I don't have any really good ones myself and 
prefer not to reinvent the wheel. Perhaps some folks here have experience in 
this area and can offer some guidance as far as templates they've found to 
be effective, good sources of templates, and so on.

3) Other templates, guidelines, articles, etc., that might be helpful in 
ensuring that we don't overlook something as we proceed down the road. A 
good, tweakable "Department Setup Checklist" would be ideal, if such a thing 
exists.

Thanks to everyone here for any and all help with this.

Lori

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