Project Management/System Lifecycle & the Technical Writer

Subject: Project Management/System Lifecycle & the Technical Writer
From: "Karen E. Black" <kblack_text -at- hotmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Mon, 23 Jul 2001 20:11:30 -0400

My company has never had a technical writer before, so the system life cycle, such as it is, goes on without me, and I participate by evaluating software tools and project management tools with vendors, and touching up (or completely rewriting) business proposals and little bits of "user doc." (Being single sucks, don't it??) I also evaluate and update existing templates for business plans, service level agreements, etc. I have been increasingly involved in the project life cycle process (or lack thereof) due to my continuing availability.

Now I find that at least one other department (not IT) is also investigating project life cycle/project management tools (PMI, specifically) that are a _lot_ more expensive and less suited to our corporate culture, which is the heroic, reactive, firefighter, cowboy, 10th-inning-diving catch kind of culture.

My project partner (QA manager) and I wish to bring in the less expensive, fit-our-corporate-culture, touchy-feely project improvement process specialists (Canadian-based, like us). I have written a business case for choosing them, that I want to add to their detailed proposal. The high-cost, high-tech (folks haven't proposed dime one yet, but we know the cost will be on a magnitude greater, and strictly tool-based.

Can anyone suggest an additional, forceful argument (other than cost, corporate culture, best or only detailed proposal) that I can include in a formal business plan? I included in our issues that our next major release has been pushed back one week (to land on our civic holiday) because of inefficient development practices.

Humble thanks in advance,
Karen E. Black
Tech writer and poor wandering soul...

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