Re: project assignment/priority

[Samantha Alper <salper -at- COL -dot- HP -dot- COM>]

CHRIS HESTER (chris -dot- hester -at- aquila -dot- com) wrote:
: Help!!  How do you assign priorities to writing projects and how do you
: determine (or who determines) which writing projects you "get?"
Well, here in my local group at Hewlett-Packard, we determine which
project is most important based on expected revenue.  I am new, so I
just have one large project, but most of the writers juggle 3-5 projects
with usually 6 to 18 months to write the documentation for each. This
isn't unrealistic since we handle hardware and it has to go through lots
of testing and is fairly stable - software is probably less so.

: Some requests are small (<30 hours), some are large (30+ hours).  Some have
: a deadline *and* a dedicated SME; some have one or the other.
Unfortunately for you, we don't seem to run into the problem of varying
sizes - if it is small the engineer writes it, gives it to an editor
(we hope), and the editor makes it usable.  If it is large (such as a
marketing campaign or creating documentation), one of the writing groups
gets it.

: [bit about customer's schedule gets moved up]
That we do have happen - I am fighting just such a situation right now.
I bumped it up to my manager, who has equal status with the project
manager who is putting the pressure on me. I am not sure how the more
experienced people here handle it, but I have found at other assignments
that explaining to the customer clearly that their bump leaves only
X days, and a writer can generally do 2 pages/day, what would they like
cut? helps a lot.

Of course, you could always convince your manager to hire more writers....

Hope this helps,

Sam.
salper -at- hpcsos -dot- col -dot- hp -dot- com

"These opinions are my own, and not those of Hewlett-Packard"