radical revamping of techpubs

[Flato, Gillian]

This will be a complete train wreck. 

Here's why:

1. The Developers have no idea how to organize the information
2. When they write, they are completely illiterate. 
	In my company, the Developers write specs for me on each new
feature. They are so illiterate, that I always have to 	go to them and
interview them to figure out what the feature actually does.
3. Their knowledge is so advanced that they don't understand the
end-users viewpoint
	I can't tell you how many times I have heard, "You don't have to
explain that, they'll know how to do that." I have 	had to point out
countless times that my audience is an end-user new on the job who knows
nothing and I have to 	explain everything to him.

You're company may be looking at this because some number cruncher
thinks it will save money, but the real cost will be a severe drop in
quality, which will cause you to lose customers, lose sales, lose
revenue etc. etc.


Thank you,

 
Gillian Flato
Technical Writer (Software)
nanometrics
1550 Buckeye Dr. 
Milpitas, CA. 95035
408.545.6316
408.232.5911
gflato at nanometrics.com


-----Original Message-----
From: framers-bounces+gflato=nanometrics.com at lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+gflato=nanometrics.com at lists.frameusers.com] On
Behalf Of Susan Modlin
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 2:42 PM
To: mulholland4; framers at lists.frameusers.com
Subject: Re: radical revamping of techpubs

Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me -- at least as far as the
customer is concerned. Although the company might enjoy a short-term
savings, they'll pay for it in the longer term in increased support
costs (unless they off-shore that too) and customer dissatisfaction. 

...Susan

----- Original Message ----
From: mulholland4 <mulholland4 at gmail.com>
To: framers at lists.frameusers.com
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 12:54:37 PM
Subject: radical revamping of techpubs


Hi,
I would like to see what the group thinks of this scenario for writing
documentation within a company?

1. Remove all existing tech writing staff from techpubs.
2. Replace these with software developers and specialists who know the
software inside out and get them to write all of the documentation.
 These
would now be known as Developer-techwriters. (It should be noted that
 none
of these people has English as a first language, despite this being the
primary market for the documentation.)
3. Hire editing staff to edit only the language and grammar of the
 documents
written by the software specialists.

The reasoning behind this scenario is; that this saves money as the
developers know the software, and it is really cheap to get university
students to come in and edit.

I won't make comments on this just now as i'm sure there are many of us
 who
just want to run screaming!

thanks
Mulholland
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