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On Wed, 13 Jun 2001 10:42:16 -0600, "Christensen, Kent" <lkchris -at- sandia -dot- gov> summed up a complicated situation quite nicely:
>re: The problem occurred when a new manager took over the company's newest,
>most technologically advanced product. This manager is very firm about
>creating a team environment within his product. To that end, he requested
>that the new technical writer be removed from the technical communications
>department and placed solely within his product group.
>
>Well, I, too, favor the decentralization of tech writers and feel it a bit
>pre-judgemental to label this notion "anti-team." A good tech writer will
>indeed find others at the company (even at TECHWR-L) for peer review and
>other questions, and there certainly can be company-wide standards without
>there being a centralized organization of tech writers. ...
>
>This budget stuff is in addition to the "divided loyalty" thing--but,
>frankly, any tech writer that needs "protection" from the "customers"
>provided, for example, by a tech writer department supervisor, is in trouble
>anyway. But, with the good ones, it's better to own than to rent.
One of my BEST consulting arrangements occurred when one of the phone-companies, which had a large, cohesive, intelligent, experienced crew of writers who did quite well when writing about phone technology, hired me to document a Java/XML-based software product targeted at developers. The in-house tech writers understood little about developers and absolutely nothing about Java and wanted nothing to do with this project.
I "hung out" with the techies -- in fact, they were based in a town about 30 miles from the tech writers -- but was made to feel very comfortable seeking solace and FrameMaker assistance from the doc writers, who regularly invited me to technical briefings and documentation reviews, lunches, teas, birthday celebrations, etc. And, I was very happy to use their lovely documentation templates. (Not to mention the fact that doc writers more regularly go to less-greasy restaurants, although there's nothing like bonding with the techies at a release party at an expensive but campy SV place...)
The techies were delighted with my work, I ended up learning a whole lot about some very young and interesting technologies and I think the manuals I wrote ended up being appropriate and useful for the target audience.
This arrangement worked well for almost two years. It only fell apart when the doc manager seemed to decide that she wanted employees reporting to HER. I think this occurred because she had absolutely no understanding and therefore no appreciation of what I had been doing for the previous two years.
Sigh. A shame. It was a GREAT arrangement for all concerned. So, maybe Anonymous ought to try to support this anti-team concept and see if it flies. But I ESPECIALLY encourage all the writers on the writing team to reach out to the loner-writer. Just ask her to come to lunch with the team once in a while and mention that you've got this great -- departmental style guide -- she might want to take a look and see if there's anything in there she might find useful?
Maybe give it a more positive spin -- the "Shared Writer" or "Writer-welcome-in-two-teams" approach.
--Emily
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~ Emily Berk ~
On the web at www.armadillosoft.com *** Armadillo Associates, Inc. ~
~ Project management, developer relations and ~
extremely-technical technical documentation that developers find useful.~
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