Re: Order Amongst Chaos (venting)

["Benson, Tasha" <Tbenson -at- UNIFI -dot- COM>]

I've been lurking around this list for a couple of weeks now.  This is my
first time posting.  I have received lots of useful information over the
last couple of weeks.  I've also been surprised at the number of messages
that pass through this list everyday.  The only disappointment I've had with
this list so far is the amount of personal attacking I've seen happening.
We are in a difficult, misunderstood, and under-valued field.  If we don't
treat each other with respect, how can we expect others outside or our
profession to?  I look forward to participating actively in discussion in
the future.

I'd like to offer those of you in companies that don't believe that
documentation is a critical part of a product a ray of hope.  When I started
at an fast growing company April, 1997.  Three technical writers had been
hired by different people.  Two of us were tasked with creating standards.
Over a two month period it was determined that we should all be in one group
and I was made the team leader.  The first six months, nothing happened.  We
were given less than 2 weeks notice about projects that were needed.  Each
writer used their own style, we had no review process, and we received no
respect.  About 6 months ago things began to change.  The team members
changed, process began to be put in place.  One day, I received an e-mail
from one of our prod ups network support people, he had received a new
system built by someone else that was not working, it was midnight on a
Friday night, he remembered that we had provided documentation on
installation and configuration (this was a brand new thing for our company),
he pulled out the document, and found the answer to his problem, he was home
by 1am, Monday morning he sent an e-mail to all of R&D and the network
support group.  All of a sudden, people were willing to review our
documents, network support will no longer accept products without our
documents, and this week in a system administration document review meeting
the engineers actually asked "how does this document fit in with other admin
guides, are we giving our customer what they need, how can we make the
guides better?"  It took a long time, a lot of networking, bribery,
threatening, and self-marketing to get here, but it is possible to get
engineers, internal customer, and business groups excited, interested, and
to actively participate in the documentation process, involving us from
business requirements through to product delivery.  It is a wonderful
feeling when your company values your input and sees it as an integral part
of the product.  All of the work to get to this point was well worth it.

-tasha
Tasha Benson                    Phone: 978-551-7417
UNIFI Communications, Inc.      Fax: 978-551-7417
900 Chelmsford Street           Cell: 508-561-7983
Lowell, MA 01450
<mailto:tbenson -at- unifi -dot- com>
www.unifi.com