Project Management and the Technical Communicator: Why It Works

By Liz Herman | Senior Member

As a long-time technical communicator, the role I play as a project manager and the reasons why I succeed in project management make perfect sense to me. To others, however, the connection is not so clear. The skills that we refine over time as technical communicators have a critical place in project management. In addition to the actual act of communicating content skillfully, technical communicators work to understand what the users need and how the users prefer to access and consume information. At a microscopic level, we intimately understand the role formatting plays in documentation, we know the questions to ask of our subject matter experts to extract the detailed answers, and we recognize the value of checking our work once, twice, and three times over. At a macroscopic level, we see firsthand how organizational culture affects information sharing, we know the importance of keeping stakeholders informed, and we can identify pain points caused by communication breakdowns across an organization. We also do pretty well at communicating with tact and diplomacy. These skills can be directly applied to the art of project management and can even give us an advantage in ensuring project success.

If you have not thought about project management before, it is time to see how your skills as a technical communicator can lead you to a project manager position.

About Project Management

Project management is about leadership, team building, motivation, communication, negotiation, conflict management, political and cultural awareness, trust building, coaching, and decision making. These traits are, in fact, listed as the necessary interpersonal skills of a project manager in the Project Management Institute’s (PMI) Guide to Project Management Body of Knowledge or PMBOK (pronounced PIM-bock). Technical communicators possess these traits and exercise them on a daily basis. Whether you are coaching a new editor, motivating yourself to write a blog entry for your STC chapter website, or leading a new release of online help, you are putting these project management skills into practice each and every day.

Similar to STC’s dedication to advancing the field of technical communication, PMI is a professional association that is dedicated to advancing the field of project management. Its members attend local chapter events as well as national and international conferences. PMI members can become certified Project Management Professionals (PMPs) similar to STC members becoming Certified Professional Technical Communicators (CPTCs).

PMI bases its project management guidance around five process groups called initiating, planning, executing, monitoring and controlling, and closing. Within these process groups are knowledge areas related to time, cost, and scope, which are known as the triple constraint in managing projects. There are also knowledge areas related to communications management, stakeholder management, and quality management among others. When I am asked about my own PMP certification and involvement in PMI, I see the benefits of being a technical communicator in every process group and in every knowledge area.

Let us take the knowledge area of human resource management as an example. In this knowledge area, the project manager must acquire, develop, and manage a project team. While the human resources department within your organization can help you acquire and develop your team, the management aspect falls largely in your lap. As a technical communicator, you are most likely already skilled at working with different personalities and you have figured out how to motivate people to share information. You understand the intricacies of working with virtual teams and how to overcome cultural and geographic barriers that can sometimes derail projects. Even if you are not currently in a management role, your work as an individual technical communicator is positioning you for a project management role in your future. Keep in mind that this management role extends beyond a technical communication project. These skills can be applied to implementation of a talent development program, to an engineering software upgrade, or to the debut of a new company website. The people skills that you already possess can lead you to successfully managing a team for any of these projects.

The Voice of the Project

As a project manager, you serve as the voice of the project. You will regularly communicate with the project sponsor, stakeholders, executive leadership, your team, and your customer. Once again, technical communicators are in a great position to be project managers. Why? We are expert communicators. We know how to take complex information and make it accessible and understandable. We think about how the weekly status report will look and whether our end users will be viewing the report on a mobile device or a laptop. This is one thing that definitely differentiates us as project managers: We think about our end users and their needs at all times. Who better to do a needs analysis of an audience than a technical communicator? We can determine by completing a needs analysis whether a two-page dashboard status report is sufficient or if the stakeholders want the full 10-page PDF file with all the details. We understand the benefit of asking our team members what they need and when they need it. We may not be the one actually designing the report, but we have this knowledge that we can convey to the designer that ultimately helps foster communication and delivery of content across the project team. The PMBOK, in its section on communications management, details these types of considerations. It also highlights the communications skills that are helpful for a project manager to possess: active listening, fact-finding, educating, summarizing, and outlining next steps. Do these sound like skills that technical communicators possess? I think so too.

Within the past year, I was asked to implement a mentoring program across the division in which I work. As the project manager and voice of the project, I needed to determine how best to communicate this new program to employees. I understood that they would need guidance as to how the program worked. Because of my technical writing background, it was easy for me to recognize that some type of online reference guide should be created and made available and easily accessible to the program participants. The guide explains the role of the mentor and mentee, provides suggestions on possible topics, lists resources, and clearly identifies who across the organization can answer questions. While I still needed to initiate a project charter, manage the schedule, adhere to a budget, and focus on quality, the communications aspect was made simpler because participants had something, the guide in this case, to reference.

Beyond Communication

There is more to project management than communication. As a project manager, you do need to understand the financial aspect of your project as well the schedule to which it is aligned. You also need an understanding of the scope of your project so that you can manage expectations around the final deliverable. There is also a key component of managing risk that you should understand as well. If you do not have experience with budgeting, scheduling, or managing scope, these might be things to which you can gain exposure through your current work environment. You might also try to gain this kind of experience through a volunteer project outside of work. You could, for example, manage a project for an event sponsored by your local STC chapter. This would provide you with some initial experience with budgeting and scheduling and overall project management. The common trait shared among technical communicators is that we are lifelong learners. I witnessed this trait at this year’s STC Summit. It was wonderful to be among a learning community. Therefore, if you do not have this experience now, I know as a lifelong learner that you can gain these skills to complement your already-strong skill set as a technical communicator.

An additional interpersonal skill mentioned earlier in this article and stated in the PMBOK is that of being politically and culturally aware. This means that you have a sense of the political climate and cultural climate of the organization. The PMBOK calls this organizational influence. An organization’s political and cultural climate can make or break communication efforts. As a technical communicator, you are probably aware of how the climate in your organization fosters or hinders communication. For example, some colleagues may tend to hoard information because it gives them power. Others may tend to be more transparent with information because they see the value of sharing. As a project manager, you need to possess skills to maneuver through these challenges. As a technical communicator who reaches out to others for information, your maneuvering skills at obtaining that information are most likely already in place. You have worked with the stubborn subject matter expert, tactfully demanded the software release schedule, or presented a business case that shows how technical communicators add value. All of these experiences will help you in your role as project manager.

Why It Works

The technical communicator turned project manager works because of the unique skill set that we bring to the project. The interpersonal traits suggested by the PMBOK are traits that we possess. They are traits that we put into practice on a daily basis. Moreover, other technical communicators have successfully made the transition to the project manager position. Results from an informal survey I conducted in July 2013 using Twitter and SurveyMonkey shows that there are self-identified technical communicators who are PMP certified. Some reasons for their pursuit of the PMP certification include owning a consulting business, using PMI principles to lead projects that are more technical and complex in nature, and using PMI’s communication principles to ensure that everyone understands the project. PMP certification is not a requirement for transitioning to role of project manager. There are many projects that do not require a PMP-certified project manager. What is required is that you apply your technical communication skills because they have positioned you to be a successful project manager.

Liz Herman (liz@lizherman.com), PhD, PMP, is a communications leader with 19 years of demonstrated achievements delivering knowledge management solutions (www.lizherman.com). She is a senior member of STC and is active in STC’s Eastern Iowa Chapter and PMI’s Eastern Iowa Chapter. She is already looking forward to the 2014 STC Summit.