Content Complete

[Pam Mandel <pmandel -at- nimble -dot- com>]

I'm the new manager of the Tech Writing team in a software startup. We're
putting together version 1.0 of our product now. We've been fiercely
scheduling for the last several months - I've met with the writers, the
program managers, the dev leads, the writers again, and we've got tentative
dates for our documentation schedule. The docs schedule is now linked in to
the engineering schedule, and voila, we're scheduled. Fictionally, anyway.
So here's my question. I'm striving for a content complete date - when we're
all done writing, except to fix bugs. Currently the overall schedule shows
us as content complete one week before we burn the product to disk. We've
got about a month between the code freeze and the docs freeze. This makes me
nervous. Does this seem like a reasonable amount of time to finish up?
There's no test time for the docs if we finish up a week before we burn. Is
this a pretty typical scenario for content complete? I imagine we'll just
have to suck it up and order a lot of take out in that last month, but I'd
like to mitigate where possible. I don't want my team to hate me when this
is over. 
Advice? 
Thanks. 

Pam



^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Develop HTML-based Help with Macromedia Dreamweaver! (STC Discount.)
**NEW DATE/LOCATION!** January 16-17, 2001, New York, NY.
http://www.weisner.com/training/dreamweaver_help.htm or 800-646-9989.

Take XML and Tech Writing courses online!  Our instructor-led courses
(4-6 hrs/wk) give you "hands on" experience at your convenience. STC members
get 20% off!  http://www.online-learning.com/index.html.
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as: archive -at- raycomm -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot-  Visit 
http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.