Re: ISO 9000

[Garret Romaine <GRomaine -at- MSMAIL -dot- RADISYS -dot- COM>]

"Delaney, Misti" <ncr02!ncr02!mdelaney -at- UCS01 -dot- ATTMAIL -dot- COM> said (to
paraphrase)
"ISO is coming, ISO is coming."

I warned her to try not to get too involved, but others haven't been so
lucky. Bob Morrisette, for one, responded:

>... doc was not a small part of the
>overall effort with us. Finding out what people REALLY did
>started most of the efforts by other departments. The writers
>have to get out there and find out how things are done, not
>how they are supposed to be done.

As Metallica would say, "Sad but true." It's probably too late for Misti's
efforts, and maybe I'm just feeling crotchety today, but I have to ask this
question:  why does the documentation department have to write everyone
else's operations manual for them? They come out of the whole experience
with no ownership for the document, have to get back into the queue for
updates, and probably won't have much more insight into how they do what
they do after the whole thing is said and done.

The best advantage to going ISO is you know the procedures to follow because
you helped write them up. Everyone should be involved actively, not just get
interviewed by a technical writer. And if the operations group managers
can't write up what they do, I feel sorry for them. As technical writers,
our impact on the bottom line is when we help end-users understand a
product, not when we twiddle around working on internal stuff. I'm sorry for
over-reacting, but this is the kind of stuff that relegates tech writers
back to one cut above the secretarial pool, and it impacts my salary range.


Our CEO made a conscious decision to keep me OUT of the ISO effort,
reasoning that if I wrote it, the final document would be nicely formatted,
free of typos, cogent and concise, but at the cost of everyone else staying
an arm's length away. Meanwhile, I'd be late on documents to end-users that
were far more valuable to the bottom line. So we had the MIS group help get
things online, and operations wrote the process up themselves. And when the
audit came, we got our certification quickly, because all employees knew
(intimately) where to find those online documents.

Anyway, I'm not disagreeing with Bob;  it just peeves me to see his
department put into that situation. I guess my advice to anyone facing an
ISO experience is to gently push back and see if, at the least, you can't
just offer friendly formatting advice and serve as a consultant, rather than
doing all the heavy lifting.

All flames cheerfully accepted. It's been that kind of week...


Garret Romaine
gromaine -at- radisys -dot- com