Doing Quality
Work
Quality work is not something
that magically occurs or can be accomplished through a single training
class. Quality encompasses the complete cradle to grave life of a
project, it is the outcome of multiple facets of a project, some for example
are:
- A well written business plan
- A well written marketing plan
- A well written project plan than covers the entire life of the product
- A good team
- Good infrastructure
- Good tools
- Good design practices
- Applying just the right amount of technology to solve the design
problem
- A realistic timeframe to complete the project
- A working environment that promotes focused work with minimal
distractions.
- And of course well written documentation
For every hour of
design an engineer will spend 8 hours documenting his/her work.
Good documentation is the only possible way for an engineer to advance in
their career. If you don't document your projects well then you will
be stuck supporting them forever!
Writing good documentation is not enough,
you must make it part of the company culture. Here are a few ways I
have accomplished this:
- Leadership by example, personally
documenting projects when needed.
- Training on proper documentation
techniques.
- Availability and access to
documentation on-line for learning and re-use.
- Rotation assignments of staff to tech
support and service departments to see "front line" benefit of
documentation.
- Making documentation as much a part of
the project deliverables as the design.
it only takes one project for a stubborn
engineer to "come around" on the benefits of good documentation.
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©2005 Bill Orner
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