Re: Do TWs need to be formally educated in engineering and science?was, RE: old school

["Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>]

I've had the same experience from SMEs, but then again 
I'm not usually technically incorrect either, so we probably
don't represent a usable trend. :)

My first choice for technical review is usually QA for user
and performance info and manufacturing for service info,
unless there are actual service people onboard during
development (in my current company, manufacturing
and service are the same people).  Design people are
usually not very good reviewers, except for the theory
of operation/functional description portions of product
docs (I realized this early on watching an engineer 
trying to do hands-on work on one of his own designs).

Good marketing people are usually the best source of
non-technical (and often technical) reviews.  They know
the customer better than the engineers (who may not
know the customer at all), and usually have enough 
technical knowledge to know what the customers need
to know even if they can't verify its accuracy.

Gene Kim-Eng



----- Original Message ----- 
From: "McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>
>Back when my work got reviewed by several bodies (not just the QA guy
>who is now my only reviewer), the people MOST likely (even when
>instructed otherwise) to hand me back copy with stylistic, grammatical,
>and formatting scribbles (usually in black ink, instead of red from the
>pen that I'd handed to them...), were the SMEs. 

>By contrast, when Marketing and Product Management used to have a go at
>my stuff, I didn't get a lot of technical correction (well, I'm not
>usually technically incorrect anyway) but I did get useful observations
>about clarity or possibly missing antecedents or new thoughts about
>audience and so on.  
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