Re: AW: How do hiring companies view TW resumes?

[Keith Hood <klhra -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

I agree with you. But as to convincing those who need to be convinced...how do you provide that extra value when you're kept on a hatrack? It's been my experience that software engineers and project managers consider technical writers as much a normal part of the process as a cat in an operating room. If you think they consider our products a necessary evil that they wouldn't waste time on if they didn't have to, how do you think they consider us? The goal of creating acceptable metrics is child's play compared to the goal of being accepted as valuable in project planning and execution.

The reasons why inclusion in the process is even more problematic are territoriality and insecurity. The design process is owned by other people and they don't want to share. In too many minds, admitting that a TW can be valuable in the process is tantamount to admitting that they missed out on a good idea. And that is the same to them as admitting they don't know how to do their job.

I think that developing usable metrics would help pry open the door to inclusion in the process, easier than the other way around. Camel's nose in the tent and all that. Metrics aren't a challenge to some manager's territorial instincts. 


> But here's one of my soap boxes... 
> Tech writers can and should provide more value than merely
> producing pages of user documentation.  Organizing and
> clarifying the design process is a whopping-huge opportunity
> for adding value.  It resists outsourcing, and it gets
> the writer directly involved at the very start of the
> project.  And it fits well with Agile.




      
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