How is your pubs dept set up?

[Kendall Robinson <kendallr -at- SMTPLINK1 -dot- CHEY -dot- COM>]

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          Greetings,

          I work for small to medium sized software company that has
          experienced real hyper-growth over the past 4 years.  With this
          growth has come a lot of frustration and growing pains.  Also, as
          is the nature of the software industry, my company virtually
          demands long hours, weekends, firstborn, and so on.  Wait a
          second, I swore I wouldn't start complaining!  Sorry.  Let me get
          the real point of this post.

          I've always had a hard time convincing management that it is
          necessary to have on-line help people developing the help and
          technical writers developing the printed manuals.  Management
          feels the technical writers ought to first do the printed docs,
          then do the on-line help.  I say this is a bad idea (not a good
          argument, I know).

          Some of the reasons I've come up with for why help should be
          developed by dedicated resources are:

          Most writers are already so over extended, and most "schedules"
          are already so tight, that the quality of docs, help, or both,
          are going to suffer.

          On-line help is often reviewed as part separately from the
          software and the docs, which says to me it is important.

          Other companies (or so I've heard) often have more people doing
          help than the printed stuff.

          Which brings me to my question...how is the pubs department set
          up in your company?  Do you have separate resources doing the
          on-line help?  Do you feel it's possible, or a good idea, for
          writers to write manuals and develop complex hyper help systems
          at the same time?

          I'd appreciate any and all feedback.

          Kendall
          kendalr -at- chey -dot- com