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Mike Stockman wrote:
> Let's not raise up the spectre of crashing planes
> caused by outsourcing; there's no link.
That's why in my other post on the topic, I asked what that Boeing tech
pubs group actually does. If they are just handling the publishing,
that might be a good candidate for oustsourcing (hey, I think I coined
a new word with my typo!). I assume their pubs is fairly advanced SGML,
database-driven, etc. But even so, I can see where that kind of work is
becoming commoditized.
But if they are doing content development and testing in a engineering
sense, that seems inappropriate for outsourcing. Which is consistent
with the Andrew Plato position that content development is high-value
relative to publishing (which I agree with).
> It wouldn't be outsourcing's failure if bad manuals are
> put into use; it would be a failure of Boeing's quality
> control procedures (whatever they are), and none of the
> articles I've read suggest those are changing.
You are essentially claiming that quality can be inspected in, and the
results will be just as good as if the quality were built in. This is
almost never true. Engineers don't accept "quality inspected in" for
manufacturing, and they shouldn't accept it for documentation either.
Mike O.
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