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Something happened to me last week that really bugged me, and while I let
my temper simmer down, I wanted to see if it happens to anyone else. This
pertains to on-line Help for software, so if you aren't involved in
software documentation, you may want to move on to your next message.
My software development team is in a tight spot lately. We had two
products due out for release within three weeks of one another, one of
which was released last week - without the updated version of the on-line
Help. Our project manager had promised the product to some users, the
engineer got behind, new features were added the morning of the release,
and I've still got a week to go to finish the on-line Help.
Our manager was quite flip about the Help situation. 'They can FTP it and
install it when you're done with it,' was the general premise to my
protestation that the Help should go with the product. (In all my years
of
software use, I've never had to install an update to a product's Help
file. And honestly, if it weren't included with a product, I doubt that
the developers had their act together.)
Has anyone ever had this happen to them? How did your users react? How
did you handle the situation? I have to admit that I'm feeling a bit
disgruntled and unappreciated. I'll definitely finish the Help for the
product but am having trouble feeling enthused about it. (Boo hoo hoo.)
I'm also very concerned that because we fulfilled our promise to a couple
of users, all of our other users have to pay for it by installing
their own Help file.
Am I blowing this out of proportion? Should I just get over it and move
on? Or should I have it out with our product manager? For those of you
who develop on-line Help, how much time do you typically have before the
product is released?
I'd appreciate the comments of you intelligent folks.
Thanks much.
Kathryn J Acciari
Technical Writer/Communicator
Buffalo, New York
acciari -at- acsu -dot- buffalo -dot- edu
