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It's great that you think that knowing product scope is valuable but not
everyone works the way you do and that doesn't mean we are stupid. Or that
not knowing scope hinders us in any way.
And, no, Tony, knowing scope is not critical to estimating. It's not. How do
I know this? Because I and my company have written hundreds of manuals -
many of them winning awards and many customer kudos - without knowing the
"scope" as you define it. When you flat rate a project - or really even time
and materials one - you don't have the time to do this analysis stuff you
like so much. No one will pay you for it and the schedule doesn't have the
hours and hour and hours you will spend to do it.
Some advice that you are going to ignore: You need to listen to what people
are telling you if you ever want to learn something. Every time we tell you
something, you tell us how that's like what you already know and then ignore
us because it looks like something you already know, you think. Many things
in this world at first glance look like things you already know. But when
you really start examining them, they are not like your first assumption.
You are not thinking about what is being told to you to start seeing the
differences between what you know and what you don't know.
That's why I suspect you are coming across as, frankly, an idiot and
annoying as can be, at least to me. Perhaps you are not an idiot and it's
just really hard to get new info into your head? Perhaps email is not the
way to have these conversations for you? (Based on your love of DFDs, I know
you are a strong visual learner...) I don't know, but this is the way you're
coming across. I'm not saying you are an idiot, I'm saying you're coming
across as one. Fine distinction but an important one.
sharon
Sharon Burton
CEO, Anthrobytes Consulting
951-369-8590
www.anthrobytes.com
Immediate Past President of IESTC
-----Original Message-----
From: Tony Markos [mailto:ajmarkos -at- yahoo -dot- com]
Sent: Thursday, January 05, 2006 9:00 AM
To: sharon -at- anthrobytes -dot- com; Bonnie Granat; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: RE: Scoping a DocumentationProject??
Sharon:
I find that often knowing scope is critial - it is a
major input to the estimating process of Tech Writing
deliverables. And for complex systems nailing down
scope is no small matter.
Regarding your grillings of me, see my last post to
Bill Swallow different ways of doing the same thing.
Just because I know of ones way does not mean that I
can not ask about the others about their approach.
Especially as I work as a TW. The only reason I
mentioned Context diagram in my posting to Bill was to
save time in clarifying what I meant by scoping. I
think you ar being too sensitive.
I ask to learn. Confirming that nothing exists is
learning.
> And there is a good reason for, in your opinion, no
> TW book covering
> "determining the scope of the system". Because for
> most products, we don't
> care what the scope of the system is; we care what
> the user will do with it
> and what they need to know to do that stuff. We are
> user focused because the
> first rule of tech writing is "Consider your
> audience".
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