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we are conducting research into the work undertaken by "technical
writers", either as employees or under "freelance contractors".
if you are involved in any way with documentation and manuals, both on
paper or electronic, and as managers or readers as well -- then we
would
appreciate receiving your knowledgeable comments and opinions on any or
all of the following observations:
1. a study by xerox reported in 1986 that more than 80% of all manuals
produced by the fortune 1000 companies were seldom opened more than
twice;
this represented an estimated 3 trillion pages costing $75 Billion.
2. an analysis of more than 40 textbooks on how to prepare "manuals"
shows that the fundamental process remains unchanged since before world
war II; replacing a typewriter with a computer has done little to reduce
the time and costs involved nor to improve the quality of the results.
3. the wrong people are using the wrong tools in the wrong way to do
this
work; the vast majority of "technical writers" (including in-house
employees who "did" the policy manual) were never trained nor hired for
the work, and personally don't like doing it.
4. most technical communications groups appear to be network forums for
find project-related jobs or for "ad hoc" frequently asked questions
about
how to do the work -- very little is done about research into the
work
and the disciplines and techniques that are involved.
5. most developers of engineered systems and products do not know how
to
interface with those who must prepare the documentation needed to
support
their work -- because of this, the real losers are those who must rely
on the documentation.
6. the key priority of using documentation has little to do with how
"pretty" the manuals are; readers want 3 key features:
a. functional organization,
b. consistent presentation,
c. accurate and complete content.
7. wordprocessing and page composition packages are not "systems" i.e.
they do not process data independently nor add value to it -- as
singular work tools, they are extremely labour intensive and clumsy for
the task.
8. documentation and manuals are an expense -- in most cases, they do
not
generate revenue for the developer -- most technical writers have no
expertise in costing and budgeting for this work, address only part of
the
entire process, and fail to report the total costs to management --
management has no understanding of the true costs involved and fail to
appreciate the value and importance of the results.
- - - - - - -
we will appreciate your contributions and comments; copies of our
findings
will be sent to all participants who request.
thank you for your assistance.
sincerely,
jack w. bonney,
vancouver canada
ssi_can -at- istar -dot- ca
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