TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Subject:Re: On-line Help and Product Release From:Hope Cascio <hcascio -at- GTE -dot- NET> Date:Thu, 9 Jul 1998 19:37:06 -0400
Kathryn J Acciari wrote:
> 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.
>
> Has anyone ever had this happen to them? How did your users react? How
> did you handle the situation? 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?
Kathryn, something along these lines used to happen to me pretty frequently.
Because of the nature of our product, we have seasonal bouts of frequent update
releases. I was having a hard time getting into the loop on what was being
re-released when. There were a few posted sources that were supposed to be
up-to-date, but frequently weren't. Fortunately for me, I suppose, I'm still a
first level grunt in my department, and after asking nicely several times for
my product managers to get me into communications loops, I'm pretty sure my own
manager applied some firm but gentle pressure, and I got in.
Sometimes I only have a few hours' notice that I need to update our release
considerations (which are in WinHelp format). In the case of FTP updates,
we'll upload "fix" files just a few hours after my first notice that we're even
doing a fix, and my RCs follow them hours later. I have no way of knowing if
our users download the new RCs or not. CD releases are more planned, and I
have more time to prepare for them, but still, sometimes there are last minute
changes that have to be done just minutes before the files are packed up for
burning onto CD.
So, you're not alone, sometimes it's frustrating, and I took the short
deadlines to be part of the peril of documenting software.
Mis dos centavos,
Hope
--
"Just because a network architecture has been designed to survive
nuclear holocaust doesn't mean it is immune to WebTV or a bunch
of sociopathic 12 year olds." -Lon Stowell, alt.folklore.science
