RE: Like long hours?

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

--- Bill Swallow <wswallow -at- nycap -dot- rr -dot- com> wrote:
> ::: Planning projects isn't really an aspect of this discussion 
> ::: Bill. 
> 
> Oh it most certainly is. In many cases the reason why people end up
> working overtime is to finish a project that was horribly planned. I've
> met few project leads who plan a project and don't peg every resource at
> 100%. The 100% assumes overtime right off the bat, and the next project
> is usually based on the timliness of the previous, so if it was
> completed reasonably on-time with resources at 20 hours overtime a week,
> then the cycle only gets worse from there.
> 
> ::: We're talking about employment and expectations on the job.
> 
> Which has nothing to do with the way projects are planned, right?
> Sheesh...

Well it does, but not as a function of employment. You take a job to fill a need.
That need is to write documents. You fulfill that need by developing projects and
completing them. You complete them by managing them properly. So as you can see,
the management of projects is a few layers removed from employment issues. 

You also seem to be assuming here that some other faceless tyrant is managing
these projects and not giving you any say whatsoever in the process. This may be
the case in some places, but more often than not, writers are simply given a list
of docs that need to be done and some deadlines. 

It is also the nature of documentation to have natural crunch zones. Since it is
often the case that some aspects of a document cannot be completed until a
product is fully designed and tested, its natural to have a lot of "catch up" in
the latter parts of a project. Something that still seems to boggle even the best
writers. 

Andrew Plato 

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