RE: Development Procedures - where do you come in?

["Keith Soltys" <keith -at- soltys -dot- ca>]

At my company, we are setting up a new development process, based on the
Rational Unified Process. Documentation will be involved during the
Elaboration phase of the project, roughly the part when the use cases are
detailed. The doc plan will get done at that point, and documentation will
begin about the same time as the actual coding (hopefully). Since most of
the products in our case are data feed and transaction processing systems
that don't have much of a UI component, the ussability issues aren't as
great.

There are a couple of other issues here: whether there is enough information
to accurately spec out your docs at the really early stages, and whether
there will be enough tech writing resources to participlate in the really
early design stages. We decided that there wasn't much point in preparing a
doc plan until the use case model was defined. And while it would be nice to
b involved earlier to learn more about the product, we don't have the
resources.

Your mileage may vary, of course.

best
Keith

--
Keith Soltys
http://www.soltys.ca
Host of Internet Resources for Technical Writers since 1994



> -----Original Message-----
> From: bounce-techwr-l-68718 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
> [mailto:bounce-techwr-l-68718 -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com]On Behalf Of Jim
> Shaeffer
> Sent: January 25, 2002 7:55 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: RE: Development Procedures - where do you come in?
>
>
> Cautionary note: It may be possible to get started too early
> in the process. This is different from being involved. Early
> writing tends to lead to lots of re-working. There seems to
> be a phase in most products between initial design and early
> release when lots of things change rapidly. Of course, the
> nature and length of this fluid phase will vary with variations
> in overall project management and project disciplines.
>
> Jim Shaeffer (jims -at- spsi -dot- com)
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Pegasus Writer [mailto:pegasuswriter -at- hotmail -dot- com]
> >
> Snip
>
> > Everyone who responded seemed to concur that it isn't
> > possible to get involved too early in the development process.
> > Reflects my feelings exactly.
>
>



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