Is it advisable to employ someone who is not an information technology professional as a scribe in an inspection session?
We have a team to inspect software, test documents and so on, and we have a position for a software inspectioner. Can i employ a person with no IT skills to write down the reports?
Not a good plan.
How would you, as an IT pro, perform at transcribing a coroner at work?
A one-way-ticket on the Fail Boat.
Good luck.
Let's review the possibilities. Either they're IT oriented or they aren't. Either they're smart, or they aren't.
| Smart Y | Smart N |
IT Y | Good | Bad |
IT N | Okay | Bad |
If they're smart, go for it. They might need a little more time, but they should get the hang of it. If they aren't smart, you're going to be in trouble anyway.
So go for smart over trained, and you'll be able to train them yourself quickly.
Check I. Sommerville's take on Software Inspections in his Software Engineering book. Quite descriptive and it might help you in finding the right context and decision for you. http://books.google.com/books?id=fIJQAAAAMAAJ
If you consider hiring a techincal writer with technical writing experience in IT, it would probably be OK. At least that person alaready has the technical vocabulary to understand what is being said. A scribe technically writes down all that is said, but if the person has no understanding, then they can make some very strange errors and no one later will be able to determine what was really meant.
I think it would be very hard to find an IT person who would want to do this job, so I think a technical writer or possibly a tester might be your best bet. Alternatively, this sounds like a job a college student in computer science might take his freshman or sophmore year.