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Subject:Challenges facing tech writers From:Kris Olberg <kjolberg -at- IX -dot- NETCOM -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 6 Jan 1999 11:10:33 -0600
Good technical writers perform an important function. That said, good
technical writers are the exception, not the rule. I my nearly two decades
of writing, managing projects, programming, testing, and training for IS and
development shops, it has been my experience that the technical writers who
produce good stuff are scarce.
Why? IMNSHO, the entire technical writing community needs to re-engineer
their product and how they educate, market, and sell it. The list of
challenges facing the community is long and varied. Some of the big ones
are:
* Redirecting focus from tools to content. For entirely too long the
community has lacked focus on the essence of where the community adds value:
supplying content. Instead, we've made--or allowed others to make--tools and
techniques our focus. All you need to do to verify this is to read any
assortment of ads for technical writers. Review the skills requested--how
many ads specify desired or required tools?
* Redirecting focus from packaging to content. Attractive, easy to use
formatting is important, but if the content is bad ...
* Directing focus back on the needs of the users. Cases in point of how we
fail to serve our users' needs: (1) 400-page user's guides, (2) the heading
"Overview," (3) indexes produced late at night at the end of the delivery
cycle that are missing entries, synonyms, and cross references, (4) "Getting
Started" sections in reference material, (5) 8-1/2"x11" paper docs for
workers with nonoffice work areas (healthcare workers, pilots, machinists,
bank tellers, etc.), (6) WinHelp for non-Windows-based products, (7)
consistency for the sake of consistency (on a tangent: as a programmer
implementing a specification for a pipe-based transaction, I was using
documentation that numbered the fields in the txn as 1,2,3,etc. Many
implementations of arrays and vectors use indexes starting at 0 instead of
1. My job would have been simpler had the documentation supplied an
alternative numbering scheme that started at 0 instead of 1 so I wouldn't
have to transpose by 1 each time I looked up a particular field. When I
suggested the new scheme be added, I was answered with "Nonstandard. Stupid.
You want what??!?")
* Making it our responsibility to change our image. There is no doubt in my
mind that corporate America does not perceive what we do as entirely
positive. First, we need to stop puffing up into defensive positions and
take a long, hard look at why this is so. Second, we need to take
responsibility. Pointing fingers might feel good but accomplishes nothing.
Nobody is going to fix this for us. Finally, we need to take action, both
personally and as a community.
Regards...Kris
---------------------------
kolberg -at- healtheon -dot- com
kris -at- olberg -dot- com
