Re: New TECHWR-L Poll Question - Ratios

[James Barrow <vrfour -at- earthlink -dot- net>]

On the second day of my current contract I was promoted to Functional 
Analyst.  At least I think it was a promotion:^)  When I tell my 
friends about this, 'functional analyst' is not the first words that 
come to mind when I say 'FA.'

After four months I'm still having a difficult time qualifying exactly 
what a Functional Analyst is and does.  I write SUCs and business 
rules, and I also develop screen flows, screen specs and screen shots.  
It seems to me that this isn't really a different job at all.  It's 
more like someone slid the controls a little to the left so that my 
tech writing duties now include some development.

The upside of this is that, when I get back to doing only the 
documentation in March, I will have a much better understanding of what 
our application does, and will be able to provide better documentation. 
 That, and the fact that I have one more job title to add to my resume.

As to how all of this related to the question below, my cross-training 
has blurred the lines between who is a developer and who is a tech 
writer.  Since I developed the documentation standards as I learned to 
be an FA, some of the developers started to do tech writing for the 
smaller components of the bigger application that we're working on.

This has helped us meet our tight deadlines, but it would be funny to 
get every employee in a room and ask them who has done tech writing.  
80% of the people in the room would raise their hand.

- Jim

On Jan 16, 2005, at 7:41 PM, TechComm Dood wrote: