Re: lead time? what lead time

[Andrew Plato <intrepid_es -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

"Cayenne Woods" wrote...

> On this project I've worked with zero specs - as have the developers. Until
> early last week, people were still adding/changing/designing the software, 
> with no prior plan. And the release is next week, with considerable changes
> still happening last week. 

I hate to say this Cayenne, but this is par for the course at a lot of
high-tech firms. Especially for fairly new products of efforts. 

> Hopefully this won't happen again, but at least I've
> figured out that I'm working semi-miracles, and it shouldn't be this way.
> I've got two main Help files and two small ones, and a 50-page admin guide 
> that have had to be rewritten in two weeks, on my own. We're small, and 
> building for existing and potential customers rather than releasing to the
> public at the moment, but this is still quite a lot.

I'd feel your pain, but what you're enduring is very typical. I've endured this
75 to 100 times over in my career. I've re-engineered docs days before
drop-day. Its just the way it goes. Dynamic, highly volatile engineering
environments have a unique set of challenges. One of them is being able to
handle last minute changes. 

I have clients who routinely change things days before drop date. What are we
going to do? Tell them to go to hell?  We doc it and move on. Hey, its their
product they hold they keys - I either deal with it or throw a tantrum. 

> Also, after asking for feedback since early November and not getting even a
> reply, a new project manager has kicked everyone into gear to review the
docs.
> However, they received absolutely no guidelines on what I'd like to hear, and
> now have sent _lots_ of feedback. I should get over the opinions on colors,
> fonts, capitalisation, etc, but it's irritating. The big problem is there's 
> way too much detail for this stage - and even though I'd ignore half the
> "suggestions" and many are simply wrong, it's a big chunk of both their and
my
> time that is not best-used at this point.

But that is the easiest thing to pick at.  People pick on fonts and
capitalization because its EASY.  Opinions about fonts and colors are like
bellybuttons. Everybody has one and they're all full of lint. 

Again, this is very typical. Imagine if somebody dropped a 200 page document on
your desk and said: "read this in a day."  Would you be excited to pile through
100s of pages of esoteric commands and procedures?  I know I wouldn't.  Keep
this in mind when you drop your docs on engineers. They dislike documentation
way more than you.  So reading that document is like torture to them.  

One tactic is to meter out difficult sections to engineers a bit at a time. 
Email them sections or individual paragraphs and ask for their opinion.  Its a
lot easier to read 2 pages of critical text then to read 200 pages of blather. 

> How do people deal with setting some parameters for different levels of docs
> review, and how can I put this semi-delicately??
> thanks for suggestions!

Diplomacy is perhaps the tech writers' most important skill. Keep in mind your
role. You are in a position to make the engineers look good. But they are busy
people with their own set of requirements and pressures.  Telling people that
they are doing things incorrectly and it is hurting you only makes you look
like a whiner.  It may be true, but so what?  Are you a CEO or a tech writer?  

In other words, you're not going to change people and you don't have the
authority to intimidate them. So you have to find a way to deal with them and
still get your job done.  

A couple of tactics: 

1) Lock down simpler docs early on. Get them out of the way quickly.
2) Plan for a week of hell around drop days.
3) Be prepared to move quickly during this week.  
4) Secure your technical contact. Warn him/her in advance that you may be
bothering him/her a lot in that last week. 
5) Set a publication date where you release the docs. All edits after that date
will be shelved until the next release. 
6) Eat more fruit. It won't help you write any better, but its good for you.

Andrew Plato 




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