RE: dispensing with documentation reviews

[Mailing List <mlist -at- ca -dot- safenet-inc -dot- com>]

Ann Pai wondered:
> I'd like your take on this from both ethical and practical 
> perspectives.
> I've been given a friendly heads-up from management that we 
> may need to send
> out a large documentation set for a relatively new, 
> as-yet-undocumented
> product without review.  Also, if the documentation isn't 
> finished for the
> customers who want early product releases, I may be asked to "wrap up
> whatever I have" and send out the documentation as is. This 
> includes a help
> system, user's guide, and setup guide. 

You just described my situation.

We DO have the products and the documents properly QA'd 
when we go to final release, but very often, there's a 
"driving customer" for a specific feature/release, and 
they need the product on their schedule, not necessarily 
on ours. Also, they are willingly reviewing/testing the 
product for us, and they'll often have some suggestions 
with respect to the documentation, too. 

It did raise my hackles just a bit, the first time I was 
asked to do it, but as long as we eventually DO go through 
a proper review/QA process, I'm OK with giving out preliminary 
versions labelled "DRAFT".  Besides, it's not ultimately my 
call, and if anybody was going to get in trouble, it would 
be the veep or the managers who sent me the original, 
authorizing e-mails... which of course, I keep (including 
copies off-site).     :-)

/kevin (Ottawa, Canada)
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