RE: Jobs, wealth, and change -- more reasons for optimism

["Lippincott, Rick" <Rick -dot- Lippincott -at- flir -dot- com>]

David Locke said:

>Less documentation is just a mirage. It moves on-the-books, visible
writing
>costs from the vendor to off-the-books, invisible reading costs that
the
>customer pays. 

Or, earns later, as some companies are finding out. Bad documentation
now can be a source of consulting revenue later.

Due to some complexities in our current project, we need to bring in a
software vendor to teach our guys how to create certain widgets in the
system. The software group team leader set this out in the meeting
yesterday, with his manager present. "It's going to cost us $20,000 for
the vendor to come in and do this for us." 

Long pause around the table.

"Is their documentation that bad?" the manager finally asked.

There wasn't any answer, but if they're going to get 20 grand out of us,
bad documentation likely isn't viewed as a "problem" by this vendor.

--Rick Lippincott
  FLIR Systems
  Billerica, MA

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