radical revamping of techpubs

[Combs, Richard]

Technical Writer wrote:
 
> but otherwise not particularly useful." To believe that a 
> secondary industry is necessary to assure an acceptable level 
> of quality in production is impoverished. Quality goods can 
> be produced by motivated, competent workers without a QA overseer.

And later:

> Yes. It is mandatory that conscientious performance of a 
> particular work task include--at a minimum--an acceptable 
> level of quality. Without the intervention of the QA 
> department. The Theory X management view that people are 
> lazy, don't care about quality, and will do everything 
> possible to avoid work unless micromanaged every moment is 
> obsolete, and indicative of little more than a failure of 
> management.

This is a remarkably uninformed view of what quality is and what Quality
Assurance does. It's been two generations since the work of Deming.
Anyone who still thinks that quality is purely subjective, that all you
need to assure quality is conscientious, motivated workers, and that the
QA department is a bunch of "overseers" whipping workers into line,
clearly needs to learn something about the subject before opining about
it. 

I'll skip the rest of Technical Writer's posts until the poor quality of
the formatting improves. 

Richard


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Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
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