TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
In aircraft-related engineering companies, I'm sure the projects have
long lead times (years) and remain fairly stable, such that a shuffling
of priorities would be a rare and disruptive thing.
In the computer-related biz, senior honchos (have their underlings)
produce roadmaps and high-level strategy. But, in the trenches,
priorities shift constantly. Today's biggest and most urgent project,
employing the majority of the local engineers, testers, writer-bod,
etc., could easily become next Monday's second-string or even shelved
project because an event in the market made it imperative to update
three high-profile current products before we get back to working on new
stuff. Then, an 800-pound gorilla customer might offer to throw another
million or ten at us if we'll just ensure that this-or-that feature is
readied in time for their roll-out schedule to _their_ customers,
coinciding with some big trade show, or phase of the moon, or new
industry-standard requirement, or whatever. Just like that, priorities
shift again.
Actually, our project-driving folk do talk to each other, often trying
to leverage each others' work - "I can lend you two programmers to help
you get feature X ready for your release next month, so it'll be mostly
built, tested and refined when my guys are ready to include it in my
June release. But I'll need a programmer in May and a tester in June if
you can spare 'em.... and of course, the single-and-only writer-bod
will just cope as usual." :-)
> I was thinking more along the lines of dropping it as
> an aside comment (so there's no paper trail) and
> letting them go separately to whoever sets the
> company's priorities to make their case for a higher
> place on the list. It's pretty much a foregone
> conclusion that the principals all think their projects
> are the top priority and never talk to each other,
> and whether it would be good to change that is a
> separate issue from the simpler desire to obtain
> information about the company's project priorities.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>
> >The principals must sort out priority among themselves and
> then present
> >you with the result of their deliberations (use that word; makes it
> >sound like something more elevated than the cat-fight that it will
> >actually be), so that you can know officially what The Company
> >considers
> >its order of priorities.
The information contained in this electronic mail transmission
may be privileged and confidential, and therefore, protected
from disclosure. If you have received this communication in
error, please notify us immediately by replying to this
message and deleting it from your computer without copying
or disclosing it.
ComponentOne Doc-To-Help 2009 is your all-in-one authoring and publishing
solution. Author in Doc-To-Help's XML-based editor, Microsoft Word or
HTML and publish to the Web, Help systems or printed manuals. http://www.doctohelp.com
Help & Manual 5: The complete help authoring tool for individual
authors and teams. Professional power, intuitive interface. Write
once, publish to 8 formats. Multi-user authoring and version control! http://www.helpandmanual.com/
---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-
