Re: Concurrent writing and revision

["Hutchings, Christa" <cwhutchings -at- HOMEWIRELESS -dot- COM>]

Tom Campbell wrote:

>Unfortunately, in the company where I tried to make all this work, we
had =
>a very political environment.  Some users would whine to their division
=
>vice president, who would whine to my division vice president, who then
=
>sheepishly cajole my boss into making me put other jobs on the back
burner =
>to get the whiner's ninth revision done.  Of course, I took all the
heat =
>for any ensuing problems. =20

And, again unfortunately, this is the way it seems to work at most
companies. No matter how hard Tech Pubs puts its foot down about
revisions, schedules, etc., it seems that the squeaky wheel gets the
oil. There is always someone with more clout than the last guy who
demands that his/her project be given higher priority or special
handling, and if Tech Pubs tries to enforce its rules, it is accused of
"not being a team player."

And like Tom says, if Tech Comm misses a deadline or the quality suffers
on a project that got bumped by one with a higher priority, or because
the SMEs couldn't get their stuff in on time, Tech Comm is accused of
incompetence. I've seen heads roll in Tech Comm groups because of this.
It's not a fun situation, for either managers or writers.

My guess is that this will probably continue to be a problem at many
companies until we start seeing more senior managers who have *direct*
experience managing tech pubs efforts (and I don't mean merely managing
a tech pubs group, but actual "hands-on" tech pubs project management).
I'm not holding my breath waiting for this to happen...


Chris Welch-Hutchings
Senior Technical Writer
Home Wireless Networks, Inc.
mailto:cwhutchings -at- homewireless -dot- com