Re: Reasons to adopt FrameMaker

["Connie Giordano" <connie -at- therightwordz -dot- com>]

Federico,

Your organization needs to have a better understanding of what its true
documentation needs are.  Don't try to force the problem to fit the tools
available.  Framemaker may or may not be the best solution for you, but it
really does depend on a number of factors.  What kind of documents do you
need to produce? Are any customized for customers?  How much translation do
you need to do? Are they large documents? Do they contain high proportions
of graphics?  How many levels of review do they need to go through prior to
production? How often will the docs need to be updated? How many people are
currently trained on the tools you have?  What problems have you
encountered with those tools?  What's your long-range doc strategy?  What's
your budget for licenses and support?

And probably a hundred more questions other experts on the  list could also
ask. I've worked for global organizations that never used Framemaker, ones
that used it but only certain tech writers were allowed to use it, and ones
that stuck with Word.  I'm still waiting to work for one that scoped the
problem BEFORE picking a tool to try to solve it!


Connie P. Giordano
The Right Words
Communications & Information Design
(704) 957-8450 (cell)

www.therightwords.com
"It's kind of fun to do the impossible." - Walt Disney


   	-------Original Message-------
From: Federico Viani
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Reasons to adopt FrameMaker
Sent: 16 Mar '11 11:01

Hello,

I'm writing to this mailing list looking for pieces of advice about
publishing solutions for my high-tech company -- in the wireless field --
in the hope to get unspoiled opinions from people who are actually using
the software, not just selling it.

We're used to write our documentation using MS Word, and publish it in .pdf
format. Documents' sources come from R&D (SME's) and we at Product
Management level roughly check it for structure, template and possibly
grammar. Then we 'distill' the .pdf and publish it on our intranet and
website. Future revisions might involve the Word 'track changes' feature,
and all exchanges are email based.

After the acquisition of another company's branch, we came across a bunch
of documentation which is in FrameMaker format and we are wondering whether
this could be a chance for us to adopt such a popular tech writing tool,
without actually grasping the real need of such a solution in our scenario,
except we're in a hurry of editing the new documentation in a smoother way.
Exporting techniques to .doc format are being under inspection. The free
ones at least, they don't seem to provide a real method.

Irrespective of how we are going to solve our format issues, can anyone
point out good reasons for us to adopt such a tool?
We're a global company, we are growing and we'd like to be more and more
productive but still we're wary that it might get in the way.

Thank you.

Federico Viani


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