RE: What shall I do when faced with this situation

[Erika Yanovich <ERIKA_y -at- rad -dot- com>]

Assuming the doc will still be under the engineers' responsibility and you only have to help, my first step would be to create an outline - what the users need to know rather than what the engineers have been including so far- and get them to review it. Once you have the outline, put the headings in a formatted file, with some guidance about what type of info to include in each section and examples. Give the files to the engineers to fill it in, then review. Deal with content gaps, clarity and language issues, graphics and formatting improvements and alike. You may divide the manuals into portions by content ownership and hand each SME his/her portion, then assemble. Suggest and implement a file revisioning/saving/numbering/backup process.

If you have to write the doc (what they call "help"), then after the outline phase, put a source next to each heading (something like "take drawing from server X" or "interview engineer Y") then have them review and help with the gaps.

HTH,
Erika


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
New! Doc-to-Help 2013 features the industry's first HTML5 editor for authoring.

Learn more: http://bit.ly/ZeOZeQ

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- web -dot- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to
techwr-l-leave -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com


Send administrative questions to admin -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwhirl.com/email-discussion-groups/ for more resources and info.

Looking for articles on Technical Communications?  Head over to our online magazine at http://techwhirl.com

Looking for the archived Techwr-l email discussions?  Search our public email archives @ http://techwr-l.com/archives