[austechwriter] Software for managing documentation projects
- From: Mike Buckler <mbuckler@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 15 Jul 2003 18:43:45 +0800
Does anyone use any purpose built software for managing doco projects?
I'm not thinking of a generic tool like Microsoft Project, but
something more targeted towards the specific needs of tech writers -
something to be used during the course of a project, not just at the start.
Recently I did some work for a client that involved simultaneously
working on five documents for three projects spread over a six week
period. It was difficult to keep track on the number of hours spent on
each document and the phone/email/verbal correspondence between myself
and the dozen or so stakeholders involved. Keeping a journal helped to
some degree, but it didn't allow me to automatically break down the
hours by document/project or automatically generate status reports at
the end of each week.
If no such doco project management program exists, would anyone be
interested in using a program if I created one, and more importantly
be prepared to _pay_ for it? (this is not going to be a freeware / open
source project).
The high level goals are to create something that:
a) Allows information from stakeholders to be easily captured and time
stamped.
b) The captured information can be associated with one or more
documents/projects.
c) Time tracking on a per document basis.
d) Automatic generation of status reports.
e) Anything else that you can think of...........
Like all software projects, the goals are a bit vague at the moment,
but it's only the beginning and I've only been thinking about this
for a day or so.
If I do go ahead, there are a few certainties due to the tools at hand
and my depth of programming knowledge.
+ It will be a conventional Windows GUI client with the emphasis on
rapid keyboard navigation.
+ The database back end will probably be an embedded version of the
Firebird database due to the zero licensing cost and ease of
deployment (no database driver deployment issues).
- It will not be a web application because the browser interface is
not designed for rapid data entry or rapid data lookup.
- It will not run under Linux (except perhaps under Wine).
- There will not be a native Mac version.
- The database back end will not use Access, the MSDE, SQL Server or
Oracle due to database driver deployment issues.
- User settings will not be stored in the registry.
For those that are interested, Firebird is a "zero administration", zero cost
industrial strength SQL database derived from the commercial Interbase
database sold by Borland. Firebird scales to GB so there is potential
for storing documents as well as metadata.
Best regards,
Mike Buckler
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