RE: Technical Communication and GTD? (take II)

Subject: RE: Technical Communication and GTD? (take II)
From: "McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>
To: "Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com>, "Technical Writing" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 13 Jan 2009 15:06:57 -0500

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." :-)

- Kevin

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gene Kim-Eng
> Sent: Tuesday, January 13, 2009 2:11 PM

> 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.


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Follow-Ups:

References:
RE: Technical Communication and GTD?: From: Cardimon, Craig
Re: Technical Communication and GTD?: From: Milan Davidovic
Technical Communication and GTD? (take II): From: Geoff Hart
RE: Technical Communication and GTD? (take II): From: Cardimon, Craig
RE: Technical Communication and GTD? (take II): From: Sarah Blake
Re: Technical Communication and GTD? (take II): From: Gene Kim-Eng
RE: Technical Communication and GTD? (take II): From: McLauchlan, Kevin
Re: Technical Communication and GTD? (take II): From: Gene Kim-Eng

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