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.

30 second commercial

Cherryleaf works with managers who realise the reason why they're losing customers and suffering high support calls is because they have poor documentation.

Accurate estimating and reporting for technical publications projects

We've added "Estimating time budget for software documentation projects - An e-learning training course" to our Web site today.


It's an online training presentation that looks at methods for accurately estimating the development days and associated costs for software documentation projects. The material is based on research principles and experience of what works. It provides clear and practical advice.

It is for anyone who needs to estimate the time needed to complete a software documentation project.

BusinessWise - words of wisdom for small businesses with big ambitions

We're a contributor to BusinessWise- Words of Wisdom for Small Businesses with Big Ambitions. The book will appear on Amazon in a few days, and will ship from 23rd April onwards.

This book has been developed in conjunction with Mindy Gibbins-Klein, whose has a self paced, home study writing course on DVD for people who want to publish a book.

It's had some good reviews, prior to its offical release:

"Starting up in business is fraught with pitfalls and problems. The rewards of a successful business, however, outweigh the risk. I want to see many more successful Chief Executives and this book provides valuable help from a number of entrepreneurs that have succeeded."
Brian Chernett, Founder and Chief Executive of The Academy for Chief Executives

The expense of failed knowledge transfer

Microsoft's Rod Caron has posted an interesting article on building online communities "to facilitate Knowledge Transfer". It includes the great quotes: "shipping the knowledge is just as important as shipping the product", "a product without knowledge is support waiting to happen" and "It's very much a case of 'pay now, or pay more later' when it comes to product and technology knowledge transfer."

Link to article "Community Facilitates Knowledge Transfer" http://blogs.msdn.com/robcaron/archive/2007/03/27/1970039.aspx

Link to article "Facilitate Knowledge Transfer in Online Communities"

http://blogs.msdn.com/jledgard/archive/2007/03/22/facilitate-knowledge-transfer-in-online-communities.aspx

As we posted earlier in the week, Cherryleaf is involved in setting up a European Community-funded project aimed at improving small and medium sized enterprise involvement in Life Science projects.

Live STC Web Seminar on 11th April

Dr. Sivasailam Thiagarajan will be presenting "Increasing Interactivity in Webinars" at the STC's next live web seminar on 11th April, 2007, 1:00 pm (EST). It costs $50.00 for STC/SIG members and $65.00 for non-STC members.

The announcement states, "Everyone agrees that an interactive teaching environment is important -- and most expensive tools all too often fall short of their technological promises. So in contrast, Thiagi will share a set of principles and procedures that increase and improve interactivity – affordably!"

See http://stcidlsig.org/webinar for details

Web 2.0 features in upcoming MadCap Flare products

MadCap Software has announced more details on its upcoming "MadCap Feedback Server". In addition to feedback reports on how your readers are using your Help, it includes some of the Web 2.0 features we have been promoting.

These include:

- Web 2.0 community capabilities, allowing readers to add their own comments to existing documentation
- The ability to allow readers to rank the quality of the topics and content

This will make the incorporation of these Web 2.0 capabilities into Help files much easier to implement.

MadCap will also be offering the option of a MadCap Feedback Server hosted service.

They claim "Now you can get feedback on how your audience uses your Help content, allowing you to maximize the effectiveness of your documentation."

Creating online social networks

Cherryleaf is involved, through our sister company, in a European Community funded project starting in Q2 2007. It aims to improve small and medium sized enterprise involvement in Life Science projects.

It introduces a new concept of online networking that supports the location, fast connection and effective discussion between distant parties, living in different time zones, speaking different languages and representing different cultures. It will function as a social network of people who know (and trust) other people, exactly as it is in real life.