Re: does quality matter? should it?

Subject: Re: does quality matter? should it?
From: "Fiona Krycek" <fiona -dot- krycek -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Tue, 15 May 2007 14:12:38 -0400

I just want to thank everyone who responded to my message! I really
appreciate all the good advice and words of support. I'll let you know what
happens !

Fiona


On 5/14/07, Fiona Krycek <fiona -dot- krycek -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
>
> hi there,
>
> I'm wondering if anyone has an opinion on the following:
>
> The doc group I work in is part of our Engineering department. About a
> year ago, Engineering got a new chief who declared that our documentation
> was too low-quality. At the time, the doc group consisted of a documentation
> manager, two senior writers, a midlevel writer (me), and a junior writer.
>
> Our Engineering chief's strategy for fixing the situation was to lay off
> one of the senior writers (the rationale was "we need an engineer
> more"), fire the other senior writer, force out the documentation
> manager, and pressure the junior writer into quitting. All this left only
> the midlevel writer (me). After about two months, one of the senior writers
> was replaced. After nine more months, a third writer -- an entry-level
> person -- was hired.
>
> So, now we are now a group of three, and we have been reorged so that we
> report to one of the software managers. At the same time, the demands on the
> writing group are even greater than they used to be because of new product
> offerings and because the company is now localizing everything. We writers
> are stretched very thin, so much so that we occasionally ask engineers
> to work on documentation (and to their credit, they have done it). I feel
> like even if I put in a lot of extra hours, my work is never going to be as
> good as I want it to be because the demands are simply too great. For a
> while, I dealt with this by working 60- to 80-hour weeks, then I reverted to
> more normal hours and just sort of resigned myself to the fact that I'm not
> going to be producing the best work of my life. My co-workers' feeling is
> that this is all OK, since documentation is only a "frill" for most software
> companies, and we shouldn't be emotionally invested in what we're doing
> anyway. Both my co-workers put in 40-hour weeks and don't seem too concerned
> about the fact that, overall, our doc quality is going down, not up.
>
> I have been trying to adopt this point of a view, but even if I agreed
> that documentation is only a frill, this seems to be contrary to what our
> Engineering chief goes around saying. After all, poor quality was the reason
> our last manager was pushed out of the company (ostensibly).
>
> So, my question is, do other people think that documentation is only a
> frill? If you were (or are) working at a company that doesn't take
> documentation very seriously, should this/does this bother you? If it
> doesn't bother you, would you be bothered by the contradictory messages
> coming out of senior management (contradictory because senior management
> says documentation is important, but does not support this through hiring or
> planning)? Can you suggest any strategies for managing this situation?
>
> thanks in advance,
> Fiona
>
>
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References:
does quality matter? should it?: From: Fiona Krycek

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