Fostering Co-development Between Technical Writers and Software Engineers

传统上，软件工程师生产软件产品，然后将其传递给技术作者和其他支持人员，他们处理必要的信息，使最终用户熟悉软件。然而，现在，市场压力迫使软件开发商为特定的、定义明确的利基市场量身定做他们的产品，交付时间要短得多，缺陷也比以前少得多。在这样的市场中，无论是技术作者还是软件工程师都无法承受传统的、连续的开发过程。一个由规划师、开发人员、测试人员、作家和营销专家组成的团队必须并行合作和协作，以满足这些严格的市场需求。为了成功，技术作者必须跟随IBM和Microsoft等公司同行的领导，在系统交付之前为开发团队做出贡献。软件工程中的信息管理课程旨在使学生成为信息管理人员，他们不仅通过塑造与受众沟通的方式为最终产品做出贡献，而且还开发、管理和传播团队在创建高质量软件的过程中所需的信息。将技术写作从串行开发范例转移到并行合作协作范例的一个关键因素是我们要求的设备，它允许作者管理软件团队生成的大量信息，将这些信息转换为开发团队的资源和最终用户的教学材料，并以远远快于传统印刷技术所允许的速度提供这些信息。

Traditionally, software engineers have produced software products and then passed them on to technical writers and other support staff who worked on the information necessary to familiarize the end users with the software. Now, however, market pressures have forced software developers to tailor their products to a specific and well-defined niche market, deliver them in far less time, and with far fewer defects than before. In such a market, neither technical writers nor software engineers can afford the traditional, serial development process. A team of planners, developers, testers, writers, and marketing specialists must cooperate and collaborate in parallel in order to meet these stringent market demands. To succeed, technical writers must follow the lead of their counterparts in companies like IBM and Microsoft and contribute to the development team before the system is delivered. The Information Management in Software Engineering course seeks to enable students to become information managers who not only contribute to the final product by shaping the way it communicates with its audience but also who develop, manage, and disseminate information the team needs to move forward in its process of creating high-quality software. A key element in moving technical writing from the serial-development paradigm to the parallel- cooperative-collaborative paradigm is the equipment we request which allows writers to manage the large volume of information generated by a software team, transform that information into resources for the development team and instructional material for the end user, and to deliver that information far faster than the traditional print technology will allow.