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Re: Do you permit SMEs to revise your drafts?

Subject: Re: Do you permit SMEs to revise your drafts?
From: Dick Margulis <margulis -at- fiam -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 01 Dec 2003 11:19:39 -0500




Patricia,

No tools war is required. You are the resident tools expert and should be glad to have the input in whatever form a given SME is most comfortable with.

That is, if one of them is a gadget hound and wants to use Acrobat markup tools, great. If another prefers writing you detailed emails, fine. If a third prefers to bleed all over hard copy, that's okay, too. If one of them insists that you export to Word so Track Changes can be used, you may want to draw the line; but if you're up for it, what's the harm?

You can then demonstrate your flexibility and capability by integrating the comments from multiple reviewers and choosing to implement the ones that are actually useful. Then you get to demonstrate your political acumen when you explain why you didn't adopt all the suggested changes ;-)

The one tactic I would strongly urge you to avoid is giving a document back to the SME for final edit. Sign-off, yes. Direct changes to the source file, no.

HTH,

Dick

patricia -dot- blount -at- ca -dot- com wrote:

In general, do you permit your SMEs to revise your drafts directly, or to
report their concerns to you?

If you prefer that they report any concerns or corrections to you, how do
you collect the feedback? So far, I’ve seen several different approaches
to this problem, including: marking up a hard copy of the draft, typing an
email or other report that lists the page number and correction to all
problems located, and finally, using a revisions or track changes feature
of the tool in use.

We’re using FrameMaker 6.0 and converting to PDF (because only the TW team
has FrameMaker) and the SMEs are up in arms about having to do so much
extra work. At the moment, we leave the reporting decision up to them. I’m
hoping to determine a way to decrease their workload while retaining
document control.

Thank you for whatever insight you can offer,

Patty B.

(desperately hoping to avoid a Tools War…)



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