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> With the exception of L10n/i18n, I know that all of these listed items
> have their own specialized certifications already. I don't see
> studying these to be criteria toward a technical writing
> certification. They are extremely important, but not directly relevant
> to technical writing itself.
I don't agree. Technical writing is not just producing paragraphs of content anymore. Several of the ones I included were directly involved in writing projects I managed.
- My two most recent deliverable projects at EMC were done as part of an Agile development effort and my division has declared that all development in the future will be done agile. In the two projects, I ran my own documentation scrums.
- Gig before where I am now...for the first two weeks before I wrote anything, I had to define a project plan in MS Project for the project that was expected to take at least a year. I know where I am now, my manager has to submit a quarterly MS Project plan to the PM server, where it is incorporated into the division road map.
- The manager of the company's tech pubs department has assembled a green belt team; I quote from an email I received yesterday: "I'm in the process of assembling a green belt team (working through tech pubs leadership) that will tackle and resolve these open items (including actions against the typographical conventions)." This is the six sigma part.
Yes, they do have their own certs. However, from a tech pubs perspective, we don't have to know each of them to the depth of their own full certification. A solid familiarity with each of them should be close enough.
John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
"They say everyone needs goals. Mine is to live forever.
So far, so good."
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