I must tell the truth that I didn’t jump into technical writing because I love it. It will not be appropriate even to say that I knew the truth about technical writing before joining the job. In fact, before landing in technical writing career, I had gone through some of the articles published on the net which gives little insight about the job. The transition from my writing career to technical writing was consciously based on the pay cheque it offered. The organization, which hired me first for the job saw the potential of I becoming a successful technical writer. Whereas, I was not very sure of myself, whether I could make good use of my writing skills for the hired role.
Lot of questions kept haunting my mind till I joined the job. Well, first month passed smoothly attending different trainings and analyzing role and work. Job was much easier for me than I had expected to be. And it was not the place where I had to demonstrate the art of writing for attracting my readers and add value to increase volume of sales for the periodicals, as I worked for in the past years. The work is to write simple, grammatical error free English, following the style guidelines for the content structure and formatting. Obviously, it is more of a mechanical job than writing per-se.
Now that I am a technical writer I often wonder what could be the road map of technical writing in the future and to gather some of the free information available on the net I came across an article written by Joann T Hackos, Fellow, Rocky Mountain Chapter, STC, titled, “Trends for 2000: Moving Beyond the Cottage”, which meticulously looks into the problem and prospects of industry in which the technical writers are employed. The writer precisely quotes the transition of technical writing from a cottage industry to a global business. I find it worth to summarize the concept and central idea of the article for the benefit of my fellow technical writers.
Cottage industry employees craftsmen and artisans who work in the small groups or independently and the arts and craftsmanship is an individual skills rather than a trait, which can be taught and people can be trained hands-on. Similar situation presently works even for the technical writing, where the technical writers work in small groups or independently on some products. Undoubtedly, the reflection of the their writing is the reflection of individual craftsmanship in their documents. Further to analyze the individual craftsmanship in writing, the article digs into some of the glaring problem the technical writers face.
Pressure to keep staffing low results in too few technical communicators to allow everyone to craft individual books and help files. Because of limitations on hiring and restrictions on number of personnel, organizations have entrusted some of their needs for additional people during peak periods by hiring contractors. The use of technical writer contractors will continue. However, at present, the industry is experiencing an increase in the number of permanent positions that companies hope to fill because of high and continued long-term demand for technical communication. In the current high-growth economy, the trend toward more in-house positions should continue, but the need for short-term contractors will also remain high.
Many technical communicators complain about the number of tools they have to learn. Unfortunately, there is no rest. The delivery technologies that are available to us continue to change and continue to display a frustrating lack of standards. Everything works differently everywhere. As a result, there is an increase in the number of organizations using production specialists to handle the technologies of final delivery to customers. Not only has the diversity of delivery methods contributed to increasing specialization, but also ignoring the importance of good content development. In an ideal situation, more than 75 percent of an individual communicator’s time is taken up by page design and final page production. Less than 25 percent of the time is devoted to user analysis and content development.
The need to interact with the engineering or programming teams often precludes working at home for long periods. In fact, there will be a decrease in opportunities for large-scale telecommuting because of the increasing use of information databases and the need for information reuse. Technical communicators who need to work closely with marketing, support, development, and consulting team members to better understand customers cannot be “home alone.”
Product-development schedules that are getting shorter and shorter in response to competitive pressures mean that our organizations need to find ways to eliminate process steps or decrease the amount of time we take to perform them. The simplest way to do so is through technology. Many departments have learned that, if we can automate production steps through technology, we can shorten cycle time without risking quality.
The need to help customers adopt our products to their industries means technical communicators must take responsibility for gaining domain and customer knowledge in addition to understanding the technology. At present, many technical communicators work closely with developers to understand the product and capture product specifications. In increasingly conservative markets, we have new roles to play, showing customers how products will affect their work. In other words, users don’t necessarily want to know what the product can do; they want to know how to do what they want to do.
Except for a few holdouts and a few organizations that are sensitive to customers’ needs for paper, we have experienced a complete transition to electronic delivery. Most of that delivery, however, has taken the form of book files saved as PDFs onto CD-ROMs or Websites. Cost savings rather than utility are still driving electronic delivery. This can be counter-productive, especially in global markets where Web access is not ubiquitous.
The dramatic increase in interest in single sourcing and documentation databases represents recognition that the cost savings from electronic delivery of information have already been achieved. Organizations are looking for additional means to reduce costs: information reuse, dynamic updating, decreased production times, decreased development times as a result of standardization, and so on. That means a reorganization of the technical writer’s environment. No longer technical writers work independently, responsible for crafting whole books. We need to work as teams, with some members responsible for technical content, some for customer requirements, and others for design and innovation.
The demand for skilled designers, knowledgeable about user needs and design issues; to participate on product design teams is already very high in innovative companies. This evolving role requires people who have learned a lot about design, work well in a cross-functional environment and are willing and eager to keep learning. People who do well in this heady atmosphere tend not to be typical technical writers.
Taking Business Perspective, it should be obvious that we take a strong business perspective on our future in technical communication. If we most value individual craftsmanship, there will be places where our skills will continue to be welcome. But we may well be missing out on the major paradigm shift and the greatest challenges we face. The choice is naturally ours
