Information sleuthing - Dashboard
1,178
visibility Viewed
93
Total Responses
93
flag Completed
100%
timelapse Completion Rate
0
do_not_disturb_on Dropouts
9 min
access_time Average Time
 
Countries Responses
US 45.16%
IN 7.53%
CA 7.53%
GB 5.38%
DE 4.30%
IE 3.23%
PL 3.23%
AU 2.15%
NZ 2.15%
BR 2.15%
HK 2.15%
CN 2.15%
HR 2.15%
SE 2.15%
DK 1.08%
ES 1.08%
FI 1.08%
BE 1.08%
FR 1.08%
RO 1.08%
RS 1.08%
HU 1.08%
Total 100.00%
How do you feel when you're left out of the loop about changes that affect docs?
Answer Count Percent
20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Very upset 11 11.96%
Kind of annoyed 56 60.87%
I'm desensitized so I don't care 15 16.3%
It's fine 8 8.7%
I don't mind at all 2 2.17%
Other 0 0%
Total 92 100 %
How do you feel when youre left out of the loop about changes that affect docs? - Text Data for Other
What sources are the best for identifying needed doc updates? Pick your top 3.
Answer Count Percent
20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Email broadcasts 33 12.5%
Chatrooms 31 11.74%
JIRA (or similar ticking systems) 86 32.58%
Wikis 32 12.12%
Commit logs 31 11.74%
QA test scripts 19 7.2%
Other 32 12.12%
Total 264 100 %
What sources are the best for identifying needed doc updates? Pick your top 3. - Text Data for Other
09/01/2021 124735715 Functional Specifications, Offers to customers, etc.
06/01/2020 67582722 Weekly meetings with coders
05/07/2020 65313071 Meetings
05/02/2020 64722802 Aha roadmaps
05/01/2020 64546058 roadmaps
04/23/2020 63762138 Confluence, internal company portals, document management systems
04/20/2020 63474439 Asking people
04/15/2020 62785747 sprint planning
04/07/2020 62172605 I attend the weekly QA meetings. Also in direct communication with Project Mgr and Tech Support staff.
04/04/2020 62022426 Precognition & Telepathy
Should tech writers embrace a pull rather than push method for staying updated?
Answer Count Percent
20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Yes 58 64.44%
No 5 5.56%
Other 27 30%
Total 90 100 %
Should tech writers embrace a pull rather than push method for staying updated? - Text Data for Other
05/04/2022 144045875 Both are important.
05/07/2020 65313071 Maybe, situational
05/01/2020 64546058 While demanding changes in dev workflows to include docs usually doesn't work, it's still a good idea to be a persistent advocate for docs. So when I do find changes that affect docs (as opposed to being notified), I send a gentle reminder to the team.
04/23/2020 63762138 This depends - pull is important, but it should not lead to engineers becoming even less motivated to push. The focus should be on push, with pull as a backup.
04/15/2020 62785747 Both
04/09/2020 62364847 should is a bit defeatist
04/07/2020 62172605 I don't understand this question. Not familiar with the terms you're using.
04/06/2020 62075262 Embrace implies a willing acceptance verging on celebration. I merely accept the need for pull methods. Think of it like grocery shopping: we accept that a store might be out of specific ingredients from tome to time. This causes more work on our end (creative or physical, depending on how urgently the ingredient is needed). However, if a store doesn’t have what I need more often than not, I’m either going to ask the store to stock it or shop elsewhere. Push is preferable. Occasional pull is acceptable.
04/04/2020 62022426 They should be given legal permission to use a cattle prod to politely remind others that documentation is critical to those who didn't suckling on Fortran sauce and snacking on machine code whilst reciting Ulysses in binary, sdrawkcab... HexaCoffemal with two spoons of Qbasic anyone?
04/01/2020 61338135 A combination of both, really, and a strong position on encouraging relationships and communication among the teams and writers.
How do you stay aware of what's changed?
09/01/2021 124735715 Try to build my own tracking method/system/framework that includes all the options above, besides alway (re)emphasizing that they have to let me know if there is any change affecting the documentation.
03/18/2021 105001433 Constantly checking up on developer's progress via slack or email.
06/01/2020 67582722 We have weekly meetings with support, coders, marketing and sales, where the scrum master or product owner briefly goes over all the changes they are about to implement during a sprint. We can also take part in daily standups whenever we want. On top of that we frequently have feature-specific release meetings, where we coordinate the need for different materials and communications related to the feature at hand, usually the scrum master or product owner is present. And of course we have a company chat, wiki, etc.
05/11/2020 65580539 Sometimes, hardly because there's no release management. But we mostly do is anticipate a last minute change and try to prevent it from happening two hours before a release.
05/07/2020 65272287 Our internal ticketing system for all intended changes (I also write the release notes, so I have to go through all the tickets anyway). Chats for side effects / unintended changes (these are usually noticed by our technical consultants or customers)
05/02/2020 64722802 regularly checking jira and aha, "watching" features and tickets so I get notified about changes.
05/01/2020 64546058 I'm in every engineering team slack channel and that's where I usually find changes that haven't been advertised.
04/26/2020 63992354 Being friendly with all the team members is the best to get updated about the changes.
04/23/2020 63762138 Sleuthing and coffee breaks with the people who are in the know
04/21/2020 63611279 I worked on a very small software team as the sole tech writer, and we would often take afternoon breaks together to walk around a nearby duck pond. During these walks we would sometimes talk about what we were working on and I would learn about new changes this way (if I hadn't already learned about them through other sleuthing methods). My team members knew much better than my manager how important it was for me to hear about these changes, so they were pretty good at giving me a heads-up about them, too. They were a great team!
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