RE: End user documentation

[Paul Hanson <phanson -at- Quintrex -dot- com>]

Raj,

In an ideal world, when a project that changes the software arrives in your QA dept for testing, the doc should be done. At that point, the QA tester would then be responsible for testing the software as well as reading the documentation and making sure it matches up.

In reality, I sometimes can get ahead of development, but mostly, I get the projects *after* they've been tested, *after* they've been released to the client.

I worked at one company from 1995-1998. Prior to a project even being *accepted* into the QA dept, someone from the doc dept had to sign off on it, meaning that they knew it was coming and had either completed the doc or had made notes that indicated what they needed to change. The Doc dept didn't have to be *done* with a project's doc changes for it to go to QA, but the Doc dept did have to know about it. It helped that our manager enforced this and turned away developers when they would bring a project without someone's signature.

It also depends upon where you fit in the process. The bulk of my career has been spent in the QA dept. If you have the same mgt as the programmers, then you should definitely be in the loop.

Good luck.

Paul Hanson
Technical Writer
RoboHelp ACE - http://www.adobe.com/support/forums/team_macromedia/robohelp.html
Quintrex Data Systems http://www.quintrex.com
email: phanson at quintrex.com



-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+phanson=quintrex -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+phanson=quintrex -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Raj Machhan
Sent: Tuesday, August 19, 2008 6:15 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: End user documentation

Hi,

In all probability, it is highly debatable and may vary from one product to
the other, but ideally at what stage of the SDLC should we start creating
end user documents? I am presently mapping the stages of SDLC with the
documentation process. Your views would help me greatly to arrive at a
definite conclusion.

Thanks

Raj

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