RE: Help! I'm seeking advice. Resolved.

["Diane Boos" <dboos -at- drizzle -dot- com>]

Thank you one and all. I appreciate your wonderful and useful advise.
Techwr-lers are awesome!

I can report that the problem was resolved about 10 am this morning. The
Manager accepted a doc that he was happy with or at least was what he
wanted. I personally will hope that I'm never connected with it because I
consider it a horrible piece of work. What the client wants, the client
gets.

Lessons for me and anyone else:
1.    Beware of defintions for things like "plans/proposal" and
"values/goals." I'm sure this was one of the problems. They were calling the
deliverable plans, but they are really at the pre-proposal stage. In
addition, many of their docs discuss goals that are really values. Needless
to say, translating a value to into an action can be difficult.

2.    The minute the Manager said "you drive the documentation," I should
have said "Whoo up!" I should have required a complete reassesment at that
point. His comments that he felt I would be able to turn around the document
faster, but didn't include that he wanted to start from scratch not just
rework the other Contractors work, weren't trustworthy.

3.    Short deadlines: I've thought about this one from many angles. I'm
still not sure how to avoid this pitfall in the future Short deadlines
happen on many projects for many reasons so just saying "beware short
deadlines" isn't adequate. It is a clue to a poorly managed project, but not
just by itself. Any suggestions?

Anyway, I really appreciate all the great advice I received online and
offline. As I said, Techwr-lers are awesome!
Diane