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Subject:RE:Single source not cheap but dirty From:pbissell <pbissell -at- du -dot- edu> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Sun, 09 Sep 2001 17:39:11 -0600
I?m a Systems Admin, but a Tech writer wannabe. For several years I?ve seen
that I can benefit my company best by writing procedures and policies, as
there are none. I wrote a proposal for a simple web page with a simple keyword
search, no forms, no database. Want to change a document? Send an email to
the Document Control Person. I was never told why the proposal wasn?t
accepted, but I gather the concept was too simple. They went with an
Engineering product called Agile (our CIO was an Engineer before he came to
IT). I believe it was an attempt to single source documentation for the
entire enterprise, from Engineering to IT to Development and BI.
>From what I gather, there is no magical panacea application that is going to
handle changes. A human being has to notify another human being that a change
was made in the environment, and therefore a change must be made to the
document. Then a human being has to manually change that document and
manually decide who to send it to for approvals. I understand documenting for
Developers and Project Management is far more complicated, but this is just
S.O.P.?s with no collaboration. Am I missing something here? Is it not as
simple as I think it is? All I ever wanted was documents that are current and
easy to get to.
Agile is costly, bulky, unfriendly and misnamed. Practically no one here
likes it or uses it, and after two years, there are still no documents. I get
some smug satisfaction there, but that doesn?t do the company my co-workers or
me any good. I?ve taken Andrew?s sage advice to heart and have tried to be
positive and not overstep my boundaries. Thank You Andrew, I seriously
benefited from your ?Thoughts on respect?
My question is, am I wrong? Does it have to be so complicated?
Thanks
Pat Bissell
pbissell -at- du -dot- edu
Gonna be a T.W. someday even if it kills me!
A landmark hotel, one of America's most beautiful cities, and
three and a half days of immersion in the state of the art:
IPCC 01, Oct. 24-27 in Santa Fe. http://ieeepcs.org/2001/
+++ Miramo -- Database/XML publishing automation. See us at +++
+++ Seybold SFO, Sept. 25-27, in the Adobe Partners Pavilion +++
+++ More info: http://www.axialinfo.comhttp://www.miramo.com +++
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