Re: Doc Department Blueprint

["D. Margulis" <ampersandvirgule -at- WORLDNET -dot- ATT -dot- NET>]

Alex,

I favor the production efficiency that arises from an intelligent and
flexible division of labor. In a pool of equally intelligent and
committed people, you will find individuals who do not have any interest
or talent in production but who are excellent researchers or writers;
others who quickly tire of writing but have a wonderful capacity for
editing vast quantities of material for consistency and accuracy and who
have an understanding of production processes; others who project the
illusion that production is essentially effortless and instantaneous.

What does not work is forcing people who see themselves as writers to
become jacks- or jills-of-all-trades. When you force that model, what
happens is that they whine about not being able to master complicated
(read high-powered) tools and they wheedle until you reduce everything
to the least common denominator of Word. Then they misuse even that,
leaving you with a godawful mess of corrupt files.

As to whether someone writes in one format or another exclusively (Help,
Web pages, hardcopy), I think you will find that some people have the
capacity to move smoothly from one to another and that other people are
more comfortable working in a single medium for a long time.

I guess what I'm saying overall is, listen to what people tell you they
are good at and want to pursue, rather than designing an inflexible set
of pigeonholes and stuffing people into them. A similar approach is to
form teams, if that is appropriate, that contain a balance of skills and
let the teams work out the task assignments internally.

Schweizer, Alex wrote:
>
> I'm looking for typical ways (real life scenarios) in which a
> documentation department might be structured personnel-wise (that is,
> writers, help developers, desktop publishers, etc).  If you have any
> ideas/experience of what's good, what's bad, what works, what doesn't, I
> would like to hear from you.  Please respond off list if this is not an
> appropriate topic of discussion.
>