Re: Fw: Ethical Question

[Wayne Douglass <wayned -at- VERITY -dot- COM>]

At 05:31 PM 1/5/99 -0500, Fred Perry wrote:
>The flaw with this plan, as I am sure some will notice, is when the
>discrepancies between vision and actuality are huge. Then you simply must
>make your stand and refuse to let a document go from you that is not
>truthful, again reminding whomever needs to be told about the legal and
>ethical ramaifications of essentially lying to the users.
>
The gaps can be enormous, and taking a stand can sometimes improve the
situation.
I remember a case when the company I worked for was OEMing a printer. There
were still large issues regarding integrating the device into our operating
system, *but the dates for beta release had not slipped.* The documentation
from the vendor regarding the printer itself wasn't forthcoming, yet the
so-called "team" was beating up my writer for not producing an installation
manual. Finally, I attended the project meeting to see for myself how crazy
it was. They immediately pounced on me.
"What are you going to do to support beta?" they asked.
"When is beta?" I replied.
"Next week."
"Then we aren't going to do anything."
Once I said that the emperor had no clothes, the tone changed. We
immediately started to make *realistic* plans for a beta that included
getting the material we needed from the vendor to write an installation
manual (I even had to fly to the East Coast with the project team to help
wrest that information from them).

--Wayne
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Wayne Douglass        phone: 408-542-2139
Verity, Inc.            FAX: 408-542-2040
894 Ross Road        mailto:wayned -at- verity -dot- com
Sunnyvale, CA 94089    http://www.verity.com
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