radical revamping of techpubs

[Technical Writer]

Well, a difference of opinion is what makes a horse race. Iterative software methods do not require iterative documentation methods; in most cases, documentation before the last iteration is considered both wasteful and useless. While I have a great deal of respect for Steve McConnell, proposing early draft user guides as a replacement for requirement specs is a bit off the road. 
 
If you develop software, and intend to use early draft user guides instead of requirements, you are going to be greeting the folks at Wal-Mart rather than trying to pull back a contract or two from Bangalore. The statement is at odds with most developers' (and most business analysts') understanding of "requirements." Putting an occasional "agile" into a sentence doesn't make the process any more reasonable. 
 
I didn't invent the idea of ignoring documentation until the final product is ready (or almost ready) to ship. Far more intelligent, competent, and capable people than me have decided that "involving TWs from the early stages of development" is only useful when the end product is carved in stone before the first line of code is written. That, for better of worse, is rarely the case.
 
Lastly, given that about a third of all software projects, agile or otherwise, fail so badly they are abandoned, if you ignore documentation completely, you have a one in three chance of coming out ahead when the project flops because you have at least saved the cost of documentation.
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Date: Sun, 28 Oct 2007 12:21:17 -0700From: bhechter at yahoo.comSubject: re: radical revamping of techpubsTo: tekwrytr at hotmail.comCC: framers at lists.frameusers.comSorry, but I find the thread both:a) Off-topicb) Misleading. Iterative sofware methods require iterative documentation methods, but by no means do they eliminate the parallel need for early draft user manuals. In fact, Steve McConnell (Code Complete) proposes early draft user guides as an agile replacement for requirements specs.Ben> Because the application itself is built in an iterative process, rather than > being carved in stone, reacting to feedback from the client, documentation > before the last minute is pointless.  The reason should be obvious; the > application being documented in the early stages bears little resemblance > to the application delivered. Ben Hechter Vancouver BC bhechter at yahoo.com
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