The Technical Authors' dilemma

Thank you to everyone who participated in our survey concerning the status of technical authors and how to improve it. We found out:

They value what they have to offer

They are confident in their own abilities

They believe they're making a contribution

Our survey showed that technical communicators felt they were being held back by factors outside of the core technical writing skills. The primary reasons were:

Office politics

Poor project management by the organization

Lack of time allowed to do the job

Other team members do not understand the role or the value they provide

It reminded me of the Stanford University's Computer Industry Project (SCIP). This surveyed managers of software projects, and it found:

Almost half of all of the respondents were willing to add or delete a feature in the last few days before the creation of the "Golden Master" (in preparation for duplication and shipping), obviously leaving little time for testing of additions or correcting user documentation.

Time-to-market was the strongest consideration while budget and staffing considerations were always the lowest priorities.

Product decisions in more than half the firms were dominated by Engineering. Less than 20% of respondents made decisions based on a consensus between Engineering and Marketing.

Engineers believed that their success in the marketplace was tied to market factors such as features, price and company reputation. They expected bug fixes to come out in dot releases or to be replaced by new functional releases; thus they avoided talking about quality as a competitive factor.

We now aim to focus our report on how technical authors can deal with these issues.