Project Management/System Lifecycle & the Technical Writer

["Karen E. Black" <kblack_text -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

My company has never had a technical writer before, so the system life 
cycle, such as it is, goes on without me, and I participate by evaluating 
software tools and project management tools with vendors, and touching up 
(or completely rewriting) business proposals and little bits of "user doc." 
(Being single sucks, don't it??) I also evaluate and update existing 
templates for business plans, service level agreements, etc. I have been 
increasingly involved in the project life cycle process (or lack thereof) 
due to my continuing availability.

Now I find that at least one other department (not IT) is also investigating 
project life cycle/project management tools (PMI, specifically) that are a 
_lot_ more expensive and less suited to our corporate culture, which is the 
heroic, reactive, firefighter, cowboy, 10th-inning-diving catch kind of 
culture.

My project partner (QA manager) and I wish to bring in the less expensive, 
fit-our-corporate-culture, touchy-feely project improvement process 
specialists (Canadian-based, like us). I have written a business case for 
choosing them, that I want to add to their detailed proposal. The high-cost, 
high-tech (folks haven't proposed dime one yet, but we know the cost will be 
on a magnitude greater, and strictly tool-based.

Can anyone suggest an additional, forceful argument (other than cost, 
corporate culture, best or only detailed proposal) that I can include in a 
formal business plan? I included in our issues that our next major release 
has been pushed back one week (to land on our civic holiday) because of 
inefficient development practices.

Humble thanks in advance,
Karen E. Black
Tech writer and poor wandering soul...

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