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Subject:Re: In the Trenches, A Bit of Venting From:"Dana Worley" <dana -at- campbellsci -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 14 Nov 2002 09:32:11 -0700
On 13 Nov 2002 at 10:22, unclebonsai -at- hotmail -dot- com wrote:
> There is a lot of work that needs to be done, since there is really no
> existing documentation, and also because the application is used in a
> federally regulated environment.
<SNIP>
> Instead, Mr. MFA has spent the past week searching company servers for
> all the documentation available and proposes spending two weeks
> reviewing the documentation for its appropriateness for the
> application. I should mention that the application can be considered
> new in that it is a complete rewrite of the application, features and
> interface. The older documentation I have seen doesn't really apply.
> And, I think our time would be better spent writing than meeting about
> writing.
I see nothing wrong with reviewing current documentation to see if
any of it is relevant to the current application. By all means, it makes
more sense to reuse whatever you can than writing it all from
scratch.
However, I think such an effort should not take a month to complete.
Mr. MFA's just spent a week *looking* for documentation and
proposes another two to review it? Unless we're talking about
thousands of documents, the whole process shouldn't take more
than a week -- at the most.
I don't have a lot of experience working alongside someone else to
document a project. I am the sole writer for all the projects I have
worked on. I know, however, I would work best by having an
assigned set of features/part of the application to document. Maybe
you have already have decided this. If you haven't, sit down with
whomever can help get that accomplished (maybe it's just the two of
you, maybe it's the two of you and a manager) and divide the
workload. Then, you can get busy writing documentation and Mr.
MFA can do whatever he does best to get his end of the work done.
You'll get your documentation completed; Mr. MFA may or may not.
If he doesn't, then it's no fault of yours nor does it reflect negatively
on you.
Dana W.
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