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Subject:Re: This too is technical communication From:Troy Klukewich <tklukewich -at- sbcglobal -dot- net> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com Date:Fri, 1 Jun 2007 10:06:58 -0700 (PDT)
<quote>
Technical writing dates back at least as far as Vitruvius' "De Architectura." How is it starting to mature only now?
</quote>
Working for larger companies for some years now, what I've seen in all cases is that acquisitions of smaller companies include documentation and infrastructure with remarkably inefficient and inconsistent processes going back many years. Once these documentation architectures are brought up to scale with international markets included, they prove to be unecessarily expensive. Though the content had been around for many years, the content infrastructure was hardly mature.
More mature documentation groups have consistent, efficient processes that scale well and handle rapid expansion into international markets. In my experience in the software industry, maturity is forced on documentation organizations only after their legacy infrastructure proves too expensive to scale and localize, limiting sales and profits. Call it evolution under duress.
What I'm seeing now in the larger companies is an increase in ERP-like thinking applied to documentation and infrastructure, including increased implementations of batch-oriented systems like DITA with CMS for large scale content domains. Really, many of the principles that are being applied to documentation only in the last few years are a result of developments in software many years ago, like object oriented design (DITA for doc now) and ERP lifecycle management (CMS as applied to doc).
If I were to start building a documentation architecture for a smaller company today, I would still build it on the exact same principles as the larger companies to ensure scalability and expansion into international markets in the future, assuming of course that we're talking about a growing, sucessful company with a future.
Personally, I think we as technical communicators have a greater obligation to ensure that our methodologies are efficient and up to date, which will have a direct and far greater impact on the profitibility of the company, than taking minutes or otherwise leveraging our communication skills outside of the product documentation domain.
Our ancient, inconsistent practices have already costed many companies many millions of dollars when brought up to scale in international markets. I see this as a sign of immaturity in our industry as a whole. I still see that desktop publishing methodologies that are gaurenteed to cause problems with scale and localization are more commonplace than methodologies that do not. Though, this is slowly changing.
Troy
----- Original Message ----
From: Dan Goldstein <DGoldstein -at- riverainmedical -dot- com>
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 10:42:52 AM
Subject: RE: This too is technical communication
Technical writing dates back at least as far as Vitruvius' "De
Architectura." How is it starting to mature only now?
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Troy Klukewich
> Sent: Wednesday, May 30, 2007 12:05 PM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Re: This too is technical communication
>
> ... To some degree, the field is starting to mature only
> now as a formal discipline...
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