As part of the Recovery Package offered this year, STC members were asked to write on one of three topics. The answers were extremely interesting; selections from one topic were presented in June, and below are examples from the second, “How My Work as a Technical Communicator Added Value for My Employers or Clients.” Read some thoughts below and discuss: How have you added value for your employer or client? How can you in the future?
***
How My Work as a Technical Communicator Added Value for My Employers or Clients
I coauthored a help set consisting of 6,000 online help topics plus 24 printed manuals for a cross-platform storage area networking management tool. My area of responsibility was switch management and network discovery. Although our help set won an STC award, customers found it challenging to navigate through the voluminous documentation to the topics they needed. As a result, the support desk was flooded with calls. Outside of scope and within budget, I created eleven quick reference (QR) cards addressing switch configuration and discovery. In their initial release, the QRs were laminated and included in the set of printed manuals. Customers gave these QRs high marks in formal evaluations and the number of calls to the support desk was reduced significantly.
***
As a technical editor and writer, I am often the user's voice in the department. When editing, I see my role as the reader advocate as well as quality control for the documentation. When writing, I look at the product together with the documentation from the user's point of view and experience.
For example, when I wrote an installation guide for a product for Linux, I carefully tried to ensure that users would see everything they needed to know regarding the Linux kernels before they began the installation. The Linux product—with its easy, trouble-free install—swiftly became popular (to the CEO's surprise).
My approach had a direct impact on customers, and they acknowledged it. So did management, when the executive team issued stock options and merit increases. The most gratifying acknowledgment, though, was that they added editors.
***
I joined a company with a very poor opinion of its existing Help System for its software products. Employees and clients chose other methods to acquire information about the software. The following steps helped to change that opinion:
-
We worked closely with other departments to create reliable, relevant, high-quality content.
-
We created readily accessible locations for the Help System on the company website and intranet.
-
All employees were notified of documentation updates by email.
These changes made the Help System the first stop for both employees and clients to obtain answers to their software questions. This change in behavior (and attitude) saved research time and therefore money for the employer and clients. The quality of the Help System added to the perceived value of the software itself, which could increase sales. The Help System became such an asset that it was included in sales department demonstrations.
***
Here is an example in which my work as a technical communicator added value for one of my employers.
During a Sarbanes-Oxley audit, the documentation I wrote and the explanations I provided to the auditors uncovered a flaw in the design of one of the company's products. The resolution of this flaw resulted in improved accuracy in customer billing and allowed the employer to settle a dispute with a customer without having to go to court.
To show their appreciation for the value I added, the employer gave me their Champion of Change and Continual Quality Improvement SOX Compliance Project award as well as a bonus.
***
With the state of last year's economic downfall, my current client was not spared the budget cuts or loss of over half the number of their employees. And with the reduction of resources came the elimination of projects requiring documentation. Luckily, as a contractor, I was able to hang in through the famine for the feast that now befell my client in the new year. The standardization of technical writing within this global company has made the sharing of information easier and efficient. User manuals and online help become readily available to end users in any language. Documents can be easily changed and tweaked to suit the needs of customers soliciting my client's business. Technical communication has helped to put them back in the game for 2010.
***
In my first position as a technical communicator, I was employed by a large corporation to write documentation to demonstrate compliance with their corporate IT security standards. The existing documentation was held in a text database as a set of notes written from the point of view of the system administrators describing what technical actions they had performed, with questions and replies from other technical staff, often using poor grammar and spelling. It was a mess.
I started a new set of documents from scratch, organized by the numbered requirements of the security standard and written with the auditors as the intended audience, using precise language and the appropriate tone. By establishing the right organizing principle, I was able to communicate exactly what work needed to be completed. The final result: the team successfully passed an internal audit, with commendations for their documentation.
***
My value-add is that my former employer now has documentation that reads as if it were written by a professional writer instead of by engineers. It is customer-focused: well organized, clearly written, and well designed. The content is logically ordered and meaningfully organized. Numbered procedures identify user actions. I considered localization so the language is simple and unambiguous, and the layout provides ample white space for translation. My documentation contains retrievability aids (e.g., an index and TOC) and images that provide visual references for readers. These elements benefit not only the audience but also the writing team because I pass along documentation that is easier to update. I also leave behind organized file systems so that the writers have no trouble locating my files. Project folders are labeled and contain sub-folders that clearly identify content, e.g., “translations.” I also included a “Notes” file—originally to contain commentaries for my use, but they will provide valuable information for subsequent writers.
