[Sigia-l] Managing product design documentation

[Jonathan Baker-Bates]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: sigia-l-bounces at asis.org 
> [mailto:sigia-l-bounces at asis.org] On Behalf Of Kenyon, Aida N 
> (AT - Atlanta)
> Sent: 15 June 2005 14:52
> To: SIGIA-L at asis.org
> Subject: [Sigia-l] Managing product design documentation
> 
> I was wondering if any of you had thoughts on how to manage a 
> large amount of product design documentation -- specifically 
> a couple of hundred paper-based (Visio) wireframes.  We are 
> talking about one large set of documentation being used by 
> multiple designers (IAs) with multiple concurrent projects 
> and multiple development teams.  The two big goals are to 
> have up-to-date documentation at all times and to keep 
> document maintenance to an absolute low.  
> 

Get your team to use the version control/config management system that
the developers are using, or set up something like CVS, RCS or VSS if
you can't access that. Proper version control with mean that a) nobody
has to worry about whether they're looking at the latest version and b)
having multiple editors working on one file (particularly if those
people are physically separated) is a lot less tricky. The automatic
versioning and roll-back features these systems give you is also a boon
if, say, you get a corrupt Word file along the line.

Be careful though - people who don't come from a technical/coding
background sometimes find these systems difficult to get used to, not
because they're hard to use but because they're "in the background" when
they work and can sometimes be perceived as a vaguely malign influence
(another system to blame if things go wrong?)

Jonathan

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