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.
Re: Division of responsibility for creating online help
Subject:Re: Division of responsibility for creating online help From:Lydia Wong <lydiaw -at- FPOINT -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 10 Jun 1999 12:06:46 -0400
Hi Imogen,
In response to my saying that the writers create the online help, and the
developers review it, you asked:
> But how does your review process work? Does someone go through and test
> that all the context sensitive help IDs are OK? Do you create test
> plans for this?
Our review process (usually) is to give the developers hard copy of the
online help (or the book version, if we have both print and online). They
read it and provide technical comments on it.
As for the context-sensitivity, we writers usually test that, as well as our
QA department. It is part of their test plan to review the context-sensitive
links, but we do not have automated test scripts to do it (though we've
talked a little about implementing that).
Because our products have a predefined interface (they are controls that
developers use in development environments such as VB), we have only a
limited amount of context-sensitivity. Therefore, this testing, though it
can be time-consuming, is not the huge task that it would be for a large
application.
Hope this answers your questions,
Lydia
------------------
Lydia Wong
Technical Writer
FarPoint Technologies, Inc.
www.fpoint.com