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Drowning in tech writing

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by craig.hardy

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I work as a lone developer in a House building company. I provide small apps / soloutions written in Visual Basic and C++, only problem is that I am the only person in the IT dept that can read VB and C++ and I have been told that I have to providemanuals for the other dept members so they can support my apps when I am not in. HELP !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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by tomsal

First, as someone who does multiple IT functions (including writing manuals for our proprietary applications) and being the lone person who does such things - I definitely know EXACTLY how you must feel. To that I say, god I hope they pay you well. ;)

Secondly, the solution is simply you need to (or more appropriately - your employer needs to) hire another developer or at least your current IT staff associates need some training to understand how to document your apps.

If you are the soleperson who develops how are you expected to meet deadlines if you need to write manuals as well. I think this is the classic mis-understanding of management with IT issues. They don't realize the amount of time it takes to do proper documentation (especially writing a manual).

The original manual I wrote for our database application was only 100 pages long, but it took me a tad over 3 months to complete.

Good luck.

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