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We're a small group of widely varying abilities and experience (from 18
months at most charitable to about 6 years to 18+ years). We desperately
need to upgrade the quality of our documents, and to smooth out our group
style. Review meetings seem to be an answer, but I have some questions for
Sue Gallagher, Boni Grahm, and the others who contributed to discussion on
peer reviews:
Is this strictly a *writing* review, or do SMEs contribute? or do you have
separate technical review meetings? if it's all done at once, how do you
keep the technical people from being bored out of their minds when you get
into a discussion of a subtle point of technical writing?
if you have a separate technical review meeting, who attends? and how do
you enforce attendance? (for example, we're getting excited here at the
idea, since we have trouble pulling in comments *before* release - but if
developers won't even read the doc. to review it now, how do we get them to
come to a meeting having read it already? and if they come and haven't read
it, do we send them home and say "sorry, you lost your chance to tell us
whether it's accurate or not?"
if you do have a technical review meeting, should you have a PC in the
meeting room to access the software being documented?
also a question on time: we frequently don't have the luxury of time here
(very bad planning, we're working to change things, but is is) - at best, we
have our communications room do the photocopying the night before the
software goes live to our in-house users. sometimes we don't even see the
software until it goes live to our in-house users. We don't have the time
to use our in-house pubs room for high-quality duplication. *when* in the
process is it most efficient to have an editorial review of the document?
just before it goes to press? after the first draft is finished, and hope
there are no induced errors?
