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Jane Carnall and Cayenne Woods commiserate about last-minute changes to little details like The Product Name ...
I think I win. True story, the ending of which just rolled around in a massive production push last weekend. In the final ten days prior to release, the leadership team (yeah, I know - don't get me started) changed their minds not once, not twice, not thrice, but four times (fice?) on a combination of product name and related function terminology.
After the second "well, we might have been a bit hasty so let's rethink this" communication I was desperate to find a way to "variable-erate" the product name and primary function terminology. Server-side includes seemed to be the answer, but then my dev guy (who is a major cool guy and very helpful) mentioned this little concept they call "metaphoricalizing" (yeah, I know, but he's a software geek).
Anyway, turns out the product has an embedded properties file that is read upon launch. So all I had to do was come up with metaphors for the various components, make one more pass to metaphoricalize (hey, I'm beginning to like that term) the 140+ file help system (that's yet another story) and voila! I can rebrand the pup in about seven minutes now.
The tie-in to techcomm? If you believe there's EVER a chance that the product name, feature/function names, or even your company name will change, work with your dev staff to see if there's a way to set variables or the equivalent.
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TECH*COMM 2001 Conference, July 15-18 in Washington, DC
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