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RE: Is your company's doc team responsible for writing documents for audit purposes?
Subject:RE: Is your company's doc team responsible for writing documents for audit purposes? From:"McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com> To:Simon <wingman1985 -at- yahoo -dot- com -dot- cn>, "techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 13 Aug 2013 10:15:14 -0400
Do you get to see the list of audit items?
I mean, auditors are generally auditing against an objective standard.
Surely the objectives and requirements against which they will audit have been made available to you. Yes? No?
If they are allowed to make it up as they go along, as customers often do, then I could see the docs-for-audit being as demanding as customer product docs. Otherwise, I think it would be easier to write for audit - given that the employer wants you to succeed. You get resources, cooperation, and clout when you are writing for audit compliance.
I've had to RE-write portions of our customer docs when our biz-dev people got us into a customer niche where we'd never been before, and there was an audit of certain functions... and the docs that went with. That was an education, but it wasn't particularly hard. They made a first pass and sent a list of non-compliance items, and I just .... well.... complied. Did some research on items where I'd previously said nothing or said stuff differently than they wanted it said. Rewrote a few sections. Took the opportunity to tune up some areas that they weren't even concerned about, because I liked their approach. A second pass went past a different auditor-reviewer, who highlighted a few more things (no criteria are ever 100% objective when humans are involved), and Bingo! We were in compliance.
That was years ago, and involved sales to a foreign banking sector, which has since been swallowed by some other organization or two.
-----Original Message-----
From: Simon
Sent: August-12-13 1:12 AM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: Is your company's doc team responsible for writing documents for audit purposes?
Is your company's doc team only concerned with product docs or is charged with writing documents that will be reviewed by outside auditors? For me, document writing of the latter kind imposes higher demands on writers. What do you think? Do you have any stories to share?
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