RE: Document Creation/Change

Subject: RE: Document Creation/Change
From: "Brierley, Sean" <Sean -dot- Brierley -at- ipc -dot- com>
To: "Techwr-L List" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 10 Jul 2007 10:52:18 -0400

No, that's an unnecessarily layer of administrivia. The process should
be inclusive, not exclusive. The process should help, not hinder for the
purposes of building somebody a kingdom.

I recommend you propose a change and lobby hard for the change.

And, you can do a slew of changes and such, so that the system gets
overwhelmed with a bunch of techwriter activity, so administering
techwriter docs becomes a pain.

Cheers,

Sean

-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+sean -dot- brierley=ipc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
[mailto:techwr-l-bounces+sean -dot- brierley=ipc -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On
Behalf Of James Barrow
Sent: Tuesday, July 10, 2007 10:42 AM
To: 'Techwr-L List'
Subject: Document Creation/Change

A little background information first, if you please.

The company that I work for uses Sharepoint to store documents. It uses
it poorly, but uses it nonetheless.

The company has your standard departments Development, Project
Management, Business Integration, Architecture, etc. The sum total of
the employees in those department is ~150.

I was asked to assist a contracted resource in cleaning up our
Sharepoint site. This included creating a document creation/approval
process. So that I did.

My plan was to load all of my document templates onto the Sharepoint
site and allow all employees to create documents from within the site.
So, for example, Ted from Development could create a document and, when
he was satisfied with his draft, could click "Submit," which would
forward the doc to his manager for approval or rewrite. When his
manager clicked "Submit,"
it would forward the document to me. I would act as the gatekeeper
ensuring the accuracy of the doc, correct format, and whether or not the
document had already been created. Once I was done with the doc, I
would forward the doc to the respective project manager so that the
document could be marked as completed in the project plan. Once the
project manager was done with the doc, he would submit it to the
appropriate business unit for (realistically) a rubber stamp approval,
which would then cause the document to appear in the Sharepoint site.

Unfortunately, this was shot down. The PMO changed the process so that
all document templates and requests for new documents has to be approved
by them. Once approved, all meetings that the tech writers conduct with
SMEs has to be approved by them also. To top it off, once a tech writer
submits a doc to the PMO, he or she gives up all control of that
document, meaning that I only have read-only access to the documents
that I created...unless special permission is granted.

I understand that a project manager is responsible for the success of a
project, but has anyone heard of a project management office seizing so
much control over documentation?


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Follow-Ups:

References:
RE: Grammar Question: From: Bonnie Granat
Document Creation/Change: From: James Barrow

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