Reporting to Marketing (was Certification)

[Angela Howard <angela -at- NAVISOFT -dot- COM>]

David Jones asked:

>Just a thought ... does anyone on the list report/work under marketing or sales
>management instead of technical development? I would think marketing would
>place more importance on good documentation, if nothing else as a sales tool.
>Does anyone have any input that might prove/disprove that?

Yes - I used to report to the marketing and training manager (which was
separate from sales) at my previous job, and it worked out great.  He
definately had a
more user-oriented focus and wanted high-quality docs, and he wanted us to work
with training to get them the info they needed to create training materials.
He pushed for us to be integrated into the development schedules so we would
have the time to create good docs.  He also was in a position to get us
feedback from users and field personnel, which development didn't get
involved in.

But THE BEST PART was that he knew enough to stay out of the way when it
came to how we wrote the docs.  (We had a good reputation to start with.)
When the development manager came to him and said, "We need documentation
for the new XYZ feature", he told us to go talk to the developers and just
do it.  So, as far as the content was concerned, we were a part of the
development team, and they
respected us as well.  It was definately the best of both worlds.

In case you're wondering why I left, it wasn't my choice.  I was laid off when
the company closed down.  Like someone mentioned earlier about another
company, it was a place where they developed cool things but couldn't sell
them.  :(


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 Angela M. Howard, Technical Writing and Indexing
 American Online, Inc.   /\    |\    /|  |    |
 angela -at- navisoft -dot- com    /--\   | \  / |  |----|
 (805)882-2350 x126    /    \  |  \/  |  |    |
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