Reply: How much knowledge is enough/too much

["Robert A. Goff" <outlaw -at- RT66 -dot- COM>]

My current contract involves documenting the progress and results of
testing a large manufacturing automation network by breaking it in various
ways and watching what happens to overall system functions.

I'm not a network engineer, and I'm not even very knowledgeable about the
systems involved.  I'm spending a *lot* of time asking questions at a basic
level, like where do applications reside, how do you start them, etc.  I do
know in general how computers and networks operate, so that the engineers
can concentrate on the aspects of *this* system that I need to know.

This process of learning is crucial to the project, and the product would
be nowhere near as good if I and my partner weren't asking the engineers to
fill in the holes that are obvious to us but were glossed over by them.

The writer/editor must know enough about the subject to converse
intelligently with experts and to string ideas together logically.  What
you can expect from them is just what they presented when you hired them;
if you need a writer for object oriented programming you don't need a
programmer, but you need someone who understands source code, compilers,
libraries, etc.

Did that help?


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 Robert Goff, Head Scribe and Vellum Scraper, The Outlaw Press
 outlaw -at- rt66 -dot- com        http://www.rt66.com/outlaw/Resume.html
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