Today I was talking to a Crystal Reports programmer who works on a couple of projects with me, and she mentioned that she uses RoboHelp to produce CHMs for a client and talked about other user documentation she does. I asked her about how much she does tech comm and how she started.

Her main work is the report writing, but basically, getting into documentation came down to figuring that she could do better than the technical writer on a certain project.

She said that the main problem with the existing documentation is that the writer could use project vocabulary, but the way she talked about the concepts wasn’t quite right. The writer’s content and conversation indicated that she didn’t quite grasp things. This coworker of mine said that though the writer could produce pages and pages of instructions, some foundational information was missing. Essentially, the documentation didn’t explain why the user would need to do certain tasks.

I think this reports programmer would be a good fit in tech comm, which is probably why she has one foot in the field already. She thinks frequently about what the users’ circumstances and needs are. A number of times, she has sent an email to me and other team members talking about aspects of her deliverables that should be passed on to the users through the documentation and/or training. It’s great to have a member of the team who’s conscious of that. Of course, that’s probably because she produces documentation herself.

Related entries (auto-generated):

The Technical Communicator as Project Manager

How a Team Member Woke Me up to Snippets

Helping the Team Broaden Their View

The Technical Communicator Getting Involved in User Forums

Technical Communicator = Perfectionist?