Re: This too is technical communication

[Stuart Burnfield <slb -at- westnet -dot- com -dot- au>]

I completely agree with John.

There are many jobs that overlap to some extent with tech writing. The 
more we know about these other jobs (such as QA, development, technical 
illustration, indexing, usability) the better we can do our own. Our TW 
skills would give us a head start if we should choose to move into one 
of these other specialities, but that's all it is--a head start.

I'd hate to think a TW or developer or sysadmin would think they're 
already qualified to do QA, purely based on the bug spotting they'd done 
in the past. There's more to QA than that, just as there's more to 
usability than reporting some UI confusion and inconsistency that you 
happened to notice while documenting a procedure.

I'm all for TWs putting in the time to learn other disciplines. The 
industry needs both usability specialists and "usability-aware" TWs. It 
needs both QA specialists and QA-aware TWs. What isn't helpful is TWs 
who think they're a QA or usability specialist because they happen to be 
in an organisation that doesn't have specialists to do these things.

I hasten to add, I don't think Chris is advocating this line ("My TW 
skills mean I'm naturally able to do QA, usability, etc."). Chris, I 
think you're arguing for TWs to *make* themselves QA-aware and 
usability-aware--it's just that we have to put in the time to develop 
the awareness. It doesn't just happen.

Stuart


Chris Borokowski said:
 > You wouldn't want to slight those technical writers on this list who
 > come from a development background and are comfortable in QA roles,
 > would you? (Or those with backgrounds in system administration.)

John Posada said:
 > My point is, if you are trained FOR it, knock yourself out...
 > you have my respect and it's a skill I wish I had.
 >
 > My problem is those who find a misspelled word on a GUI once
 > in a while and proclaim themselves QAers.
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