By Annette Reilly | Fellow
If you ask a group of technical communicators what standards they use, some might name a favorite style guide or dictionary, XHTML, Wikipedia, a version of a common graphics tool or help topic software, or perhaps a metadata standard like DITA. All of these take us toward the goal of a standard, which is to set minimum agreed requirements for a process or product. But the hypertext and metadata standards, valuable as they are to single sourcing, leave out important parts of what technical communicators aim to do. Going beyond website tagging and metadata are standards that establish consistent processes to produce technical information of consistent quality in its content, structure, and format.
Standards have several characteristics that make them valuable for technical communicators: they are developed by open groups, reflect consensus from a balanced group of balloters, are suitable for international use, and are maintained by a recognized, impartial standards development organization, such as ISO, IEEE, OASIS, ANSI and NISO (US), or W3C. Standards are not proprietary, vendor-specific, or tool-bound. We agree to use standards to support interoperability, produce consistent products, form a basis for process stabilization or improvement, and even give two parties in a contract a basis for agreement on how work will be done.
If you are looking for the basic standards for technical communication, your choice depends on your role: are you a designer, developer, manager, outsourcer, contractor, tester, editor? In the past ten years, STC members contributed to a suite of international standards aimed at these roles. The “2651N” series of standards is designed to be used individually or as a set.
- ISO/IEC/IEEE 26511:2011, Systems and software engineering—Requirements for managers of user documentation
- ISO/IEC/IEEE 26512:2011, Systems and software engineering—Requirements for acquirers and suppliers of user documentation
- ISO/IEC/IEEE 26513:2009, Systems and software engineering—Requirements for testers and assessors of user documentation.
- ISO/IEC/IEEE 26514:2008, Systems and software engineering—User documentation requirements for documentation designers and developers
- ISO/IEC/IEEE 26515:2011, Systems and software engineering—Developing user documentation in an agile environment
- ISO/IEC/IEEE 15289:2011, Systems and software engineering—Content of life cycle information items (documentation)
- ISO/IEC/IEEE 24765:2010, Systems and software engineering—Vocabulary: freely available at www.computer.org/sevocab
Most of these standards are aimed at team members involved with software user documentation. STC members concentrated on user assistance standardization (as well as in DITA), because the majority of members work in this area, and there is a body of practical experience and research findings as the basis for standardization. For example, the 26515 standard is invaluable if you find yourself supporting an agile development project. However, these standards generally apply beyond software user documentation to any kind of instructions or help, and to managing, outsourcing, or testing documentation for any project. The ISO/IEC/IEEE 15289 standard has broader applicability: it outlines the content of virtually every kind of documentation you would need to produce on a systems or services project: policies, plans, procedures, reports, requests, specifications and descriptions. For more information, see “Audience-Oriented Standards for Software Documentation from ISO,” Intercom, March 2011.
STC is not a standards development organization because the infrastructure needed to govern, manage, develop, ballot, maintain, and market international standards projects is considerable. Standards organizations, even not-for-profit or governmental organizations, need to cover their costs, so most standards have a price. You can buy standards from ISO (www.iso.org), IEC (www.webstore.iec.ch), or IEEE (http://standards.ieee.org). Or look for your own national standards body, such as ANSI in the United States, which resells the international standards.
Standards may seem pricey, but compare the cost if your organization had to make up that much authoritative guidance on its own and then convince the rest of the world to agree with your way. In most cases, the price of a standard is less than a day’s pay for a technical communicator and comparable to a college textbook. Efforts are underway to produce a reasonably priced CD collection of the basic 2651N standards, which would be particularly useful for students.
Looking ahead, several standards projects will affect STC members. Besides DITA work, new ISO/IEC/IEEE standards are being developed for content management and for websites that provide technical information. These two should be ready for publication by late 2014.
Annette Reilly (annette.reilly@computer.org), PhD, is the Convenor of ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC7/WG2, systems, software, and services documentation, and the editor or co-editor of four ISO standards. She works as a proposal developer for Lockheed Martin.
Thank you, Annette, for the post. It is informative, and contains the required information in just the right details.
Woah that blog page is astounding i really like examining your content regularly. Keep within the good work! You recognize, so many people are researching about just for this information and facts, you’ll be able to make them greatly.
hey there and thank you for your info – I’ve definitely picked up anything new
from right here. I did however expertise a few technical issues using this web site, as I experienced to reload the
web site many times previous to I could get it to load correctly.
I had been wondering if your hosting is OK? Not that I’m complaining,
but slow loading instances times will very frequently affect your placement in google and can damage
your quality score if advertising and marketing with Adwords.
Anyway I am adding this RSS to my e-mail and can look out for a lot more of your respective intriguing content.
Ensure that you update this again soon.
Spectacular details once and for all, you just won a whole new readers. Precisely what will you would suggest with regards to your current post that you just created a day or two earlier? Virtually any guaranteed?
When you make a website, all your web pages are served from
the server residing somewhere on the internet. Good providers
instead hire highly trained specialists from their own country to ensure you receive the specialized care you deserve.
These methods are extremely efficient, saving companies and employees time and
money.
It seems as if there’s a lot of blame going towards the manager, but it was the players who underperformed out there, Gerrard said. “People talk about tactics and stuff, but there’s only so much that a manager can do. The players have to deliver, and the players never delivered.” ARGENTINA rode its luck to come away from Lima with a 1-1 draw against Peru and maintain its slender one-point lead at the top of the World Cup 2014 South American qualifying table.