RE: Is this a typical technical writing environment?

["Victoria Nuttle" <vnuttle -at- cauto -dot- com>]

-----Original Message-----
From: Lucy Connor [mailto:lconnor -at- asmr -dot- com] 
Sent: Friday, February 20, 2004 8:17 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: Is this a typical technical writing environment?

Will I always be the last to know about new developments?  Or is this
something that varies from job to job?  Do any of you deal with this?
How?

Lucy Connor

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

At this company?  Yeah, you probably will always be the last to know.
But most of the time when companies do function like that, they're used
to the docs being behind the application and there normally isn't
pressure that you're not as up-to-date as the application.

I work for and sit right smack in the middle of the development group,
and there are still new additions to software that I miss.  We follow a
pretty aggressive release schedule with fixes and updates for our big
product, since it went out last month we've had at least 5 new versions
with document additions, and still more to come. 

I've learned to live with it since we made the move to all online
documentation, which allows everyone the comfort of knowing that if we
need to change something, the customers will still have access to the
latest documentation without a lot of fuss.  I've also broken down the
documents into several different docs, which means core documents like
User Guides and instructions can remain pretty much unchanged, while the
release notes get updated frequently.

Some people might be uncomfortable and find it a sloppy way to do
things, but for some companies, it's just the way things go.  

------------------------------
Victoria J. Nuttle
Technical Writer, Creative Automation
vnuttle -at- cauto -dot- com