Re: Managed Services
I'm curious about Managed Services regarding technical and/or marketing writing and editing documentation. Specifically:
Have you or your company used or thinking about using a "managed services" model vs. the typical contractor/staff augmentation model?
If so, what have you found or what do you think are the pluses and minuses of managed services? The concerns? The obstacles?
In your or your company's view, what does "managed services" even mean? What would be the hallmarks of a managed services content project?
Never heard of it. Sounds like the opposite of the right way to do documentation. My inner curmudgeon hears, "Please send 13 megabytes of documentation by next Friday. Black ink only, do not use Comic Sans."
The best doc teams I've had the pleasure to inhabit have served as an unofficial (and often resented) part of software QC, and occasionally of user-interface design. Only rarely did those teams have to document strictly from the specifications.
On the other hand, there are economic models that work in that latter fashion. At one time, so I've heard, Raytheon would get a military contract, and then design, build and document to the contract with no deviations from the written specs, even if it was obvious that something simply would not work. The Navy would test the result, determine that it did not work, and put out requests for bids for a new contract. The method was predictably good for years of revenue. Any tech writer who tried to improve things rather than following instructions got pushed aside.
In the Raytheon-style military model the "managed services" approach might work well.
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References:
Managed Services: From: Goertz, Teresa
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