The WSR (affectionately dubbed the Wizzzzer by my fellow new Tech Writer at Northrop) is one of the banes and reasons for my (early) existence. The Weekly Status Report is exactly as it sounds. It is a weekly update of what has been accomplished in the project from each team.
Now, one would think because this document is put out weekly it would not be hard to meet deadline; unfortunately, this is not the case. One would also think because it is a weekly document that not much progress would be made and the information would remain pretty consistent, making a quick update--well, quick. Oh, no no. This has been a big lesson for me in the few weeks I've been working at Northrop. No one ever has any time. The WSR is due at the same time each week and is put out in the same format and has the same requirements. But each week it comes in late. It comes in formats that are entirely random, for example a manager will format his text all in a table and we don't use tables in most sections of this document. It sets the TW team more time to reformat a chunk of text not only for the consistency of the document, but also trying to maintain the meaning. If an author could just stick to the weekly format life would be so much easier!
I understand this is how the "working world" works. Everyone is busy and does their own thing but that doesn't make it any less frustrating. This document should be very easy to put together and to deliver. The WSR is word document that basically needs status updates copied and pasted in with a quick edit for grammar, etc.
I think this one may be a life lesson in patience.
1 comment:
Interesting discussion here. Often it takes a while for a technical writer to become acclimated to the organizational culture and to understand the kinds of suggestions that she can make and should not make, but perhaps there's an opportunity here for you to brainstorm and to develop some type of template that project managers could fill out to make the WSRs more consistent.
And on that last point--consistency. The example you mention speaks of the inconsistent ways in which information is presented: sometimes in tables when tables are not normally used. Does the inconsistency in presentation also involve "content"? That is, do some project managers include information that's not important, other project managers not include information that's necessary, etc.? A "template" could also speak to these types of concerns and given project managers a clear sense of the purpose and the audience for this document--and to understand how these purposes and these audiences determine the kinds of information to include, the format in which to present information, etc.
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