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Subject:Data Storage and File Management From:"George F. Hayhoe" <george -at- GHAYHOE -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 1 Apr 1999 11:50:11 -0500
I heartily endorse what several other listmembers,
especially Elna Tymes and Mike Uhl, have said. This thread
is more relevant to our field than to almost any other I can
imagine. The question of data storage and file management is
essential to effective publications project management.
Technical communicators routinely produce compound documents
composed of multiple files. The perfect example is a Web
site, which can easily include hundreds of HTML, JPEG, GIF,
and other types of files. The precise locations of all the
files in the web and their interrelationships must be
managed carefully to ensure that the publications team
always knows where the most current version of each file is
stored during development and maintenance, and that each
page is displayed as intended once published. That means
that you need explicit, carefully designed, and well
enforced policies that determine how files get named, where
they get stored, and when they get backed up.
If you're a publications project manager, part of your job
description is to play disk cop regularly, making certain
that team members name files according to conventions and
store them in the correct locations, and that someone
(whether from your IT organization or your own project team)
performs daily backups.
You must also consider project complexity, the number of
people involved, and the sensitivity of the information
you're producing in deciding whether you need access
controls and an audit trail of edits to documents. Once your
team and your projects reach a critical mass, you'll need a
network architect and document management software to ensure
that your data storage and file management policies work as
intended.
If you're an independent or a lone writer, you have to do
all this yourself--a really tough job, the significance of
which you underestimate at your peril.
Stuff happens. People get sick, quit, even die. Hardware
fails. When the unforeseen inevitably happens, a well
designed, well communicated, and well enforced data storage
and file management process will ensure that everyone on the
publications team knows where the most recent version of
every file related to a project is located and can access
them.
If you can afford to lose more than a day's worth of work,
this argument isn't going to convince you, but most of us
have better things to do with our own, our boss's, and our
customers' time than to need to recreate a document because
a disk crashed.
