Newsletter of the East Bay Chapter of STC
September/October 2002

Trends in Technical Writing

by Susan Harlan
EBSTC President Elect

Notes from the 2002 STC Annual Conference

Scanning the list of technical session topics to be presented at the 49^th STC Annual Conference in Nashville last May, I was drawn to the subjects covering trends in technical writing and job-skill marketing. Once at the conference, I heard international speakers bring a global perspective to some of the changes occurring in the profession. What has happened in the job market this summer is an example of the foresight shown by the presenters in May.

The topics centered on business changes and the current state of flux in the profession. Life as a technical writer will not be the same for most of us. We not only need to learn basic software such as Dreamweaver and Framemaker, but also how to view technical writing from a business perspective—for example, in terms of return on investment (ROI), and how to write a business case (BC). The speakers presented the very positive message that good writers are always needed!

We need to consider the speakers’ observations and recognize the enormous amount of change and restructuring occurring in the business world today. The following is a summary of the notes I took at various sessions where knowledgeable speakers outlined what we need to do to prepare ourselves for work in the future.

Global Changes in Technical Writing

Under the old rules, specialization was a requisite in a good economy and diversity in a poor economy, but now the requirement is diversity with some specialization. The technical writing profession focuses on core skills, mainly writing. But like so many other professions, it now requires specialized knowledge in other areas, too. Fifty percent of technical writing jobs now draw on a combination of writing and programming skills. The ability to write code, JavaScript, or XML is valuable for these positions. However, there are other specialty areas that combine with technical writing—such as instructional design, information architecture, and such industry-specific combos as statistics for insurance writing—as well as skills in interviewing, managing, or design.

The global perspective offered by the speakers manifests three trends for technical writers:

• Outsourcing—shifts costs away from internal to external.
• Offshoring—sends technical documentation work overseas.
• Single Sourcing—creates multiple documents from a single content file.

At this point, you might ask if it’s time to jump ship or find another line of work. Perhaps not, because the whole world is changing, and other professions are also going through changes.

A New Direction: Business Tools for Tech Writers

Good business tools and procedures must be used to justify adding or delaying changes like those noted above. One such tool is ROI. This involves zeroing in on the bottom line, proving value by knowing what a customer wants in the documentation, and then articulating this in correct business language. Presenting an ROI analysis is best accomplished by developing a BC, a formal report and managerial tool that incorporates metrics, business logic, and managerial language.

We as writers need to understand the impact of these business tools and learn how to use them. Metrics is objective data used to make a point. It’s a measurement of quantities as well as qualities and can illustrate how a situation affects the bottom line. For example, in a rush to deadline, the manager overseeing the technical writers may insist that editing must be skipped this time. “It’s a waste of time,” is the argument. Using metrics in response to this situation, the tech pubs staff can show that by skipping the editing process, the documentation mistakes that reach customers would increase Help Desk calls by 22%. Another example involves a cut in staff. With metrics, the tech pubs manager knows that an untimely 33% cut in staff forecasted by management will extend the project timeline by one third. This would cause the manuals to be completed 33% later than normal, which would make it impossible to ship the product.

To handle the possibility of sending tech writing work offshore, strategies need to be developed that include metrics and business logic. The offshore price for technical writers is between $7 and $8 per hour. With metrics, the project cycle time, editing costs, and management time costs can be calculated and then analyzed from a business perspective. This data might cause management to reassess the use of offshoring.

Metrics and business logic can also be applied to single-sourcing decisions. Often the IT department drives single sourcing because it involves both software and hardware. Yet, technical communicators could be running the single-sourcing function because it is process-oriented. Analyzing the situation using business tools might return single sourcing to its rightful owners.

Toward the Future

Conference speakers offered brief examples and explanations of ROI and BC, and then suggested reading books or taking a business class to flesh out our knowledge. In the future, so it appears, in addition to learning new software, we will also need to be able to discuss efficiency and cost-reduction strategies or refer to documentation as a product for increasing revenue.

Check the list of speakers for the East Bay Chapter’s fall meetings, and you will notice that our programs are focusing on these changes. With program topics such as “Writing for the Web,” “Metrics,” and “Framemaker 7 & XML,” we are looking forward to the future and preparing to meet the challenge. Please join us this year and also plan to attend STC’s 40^th anniversary conference next May in Dallas.

Pictured from the conference are left to right Teresa Washburn, Judith Herr, and Brenda Huettner (president of the New Mexico Kachina chapter last year, editor of the STC International SIG newsletter, and friend of Judith).

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