Re: Clear Case & Frame Docs.

["Susan W. Gallagher" <sgallagher -at- expersoft -dot- com>]

At 11:22 AM 10/21/99 -0700, Mark Dempsey wrote:

>We're told we must use Clear Case for our Frame docs, and I believe this
>is a colossal waste of time and resources...

I'm not sure why you feel that way, Mark. 

Okay, maybe I wouldn't choose Clear Case. Okay, so just maybe 
Clear Case is a little more engineering-centric than the 
typical doc group would prefer, but still, wouldn't you be more
comfortable with *some* kind of version control system in place???

Document files can become corrupted, even when you use Frame. In
your current model, how do you recover a corrupted file? Is it as
easy as checking out yesterday's version?

Product direction can change in mid-stream. Haven't you ever entered
a day and a half's worth of changes only to be told "never mind"???

Working collisions happen everywhere, any time the team count is
greater than one. Have you ever worked all day on editing changes
only to find out that a collegue has been working equally hard to
reformat exactly the same document???

If you're in the middle of making changes for revision 2.0 and 
engineering decides to issue a 1.1 release, how easy is it for
you to pull together the 1.0 docs to make changes??? In the 
typical workgroup without version control, I'd guess the answer
would be "not very".

Frankly, once I found out how cool version control/configuration
management really is, I'd be hard pressed to run a doc department
without it.

Were I you, I'd be pleased that someone above me thought enough
of the doc product to include it with the rest of the software.
Quityerbitchin and say "thank you" -- someone in your company
appreciates what you do!   ;-)




-Sue Gallagher               http://pw1.netcom.com/~gscale/susanwg/
sgallagher -at- expersoft -dot- com     http://www.expersoft.com

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