RE: Expectations (possible rant - it IS Friday!)
Hi all,
A couple of recent events have got me to thinking about the expectations
placed on a Technical Writer.
[snip]
In both these events, it seems to me the expectations on the
Technical Writer are quite high, with some strange assumptions
being made. The Tech Writer is expected to be able to produce
deliverables, (in the second case almost instantly), as if by 'magic'.
There is no understanding of the requirements of Technical Writing,
not indeed that there are different methods and different skill sets.
My questions are: have you found this to be the case? How do you
manage such expectations? How do you get across the fact that
Technical Writing is a profession and not just "the ability to write"?
Robyn (who's hoping to hear that not ALL companies have such little
understanding of Technical Writing and to glean some information on
how to 'train' her employers in this area)
Robyn, I'm sure Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, would love to get an e-mail from you on this one. New material for developing Tina the Technical Writer.
The place where I lurk these days has a different driver. Getting everything out the door yesterday afternoon is less important than getting things consistent--even if it is consistently wrong. (Actually, we are pretty accurate most of the time, and as long as we can justify our assumptions . . ..)
Anyway, there is a bit of an understanding in our management that it takes a certain amount of time for someone new to learn the business. We are working with some very complex data systems, and it takes a lot of time and effort to become familiar with them.
Finally, there is a 'political' spin in that we don't want to do or say anything the would pop up in a negative way in the press or land our minister in hot water.
That might be a place to start the juices flowing on coming up with a solution to your problem. What would be the consequences of substandard documentation? Would it jurt sales? Would it drive up costs? Would it make your company and its products look like a worse choice than one or more of its competitors? How would a more reasonable schedule head this off at the pass?
Just a thought.
--
John Fleming
Technical Writer
Edmonton, Alberta
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