What Do We Manage?: A Survey of the Management Portfolios of Large Technical Communication Groups

Publisher： Society for Technical Communication

ISSN： 0049-3155

Source： Technical Communication, Vol.51, Iss.1, 2004-02, pp. : 45-67

Disclaimer: Any content in publications that violate the sovereignty, the constitution or regulations of the PRC is not accepted or approved by CNPIEC.

Previous Menu Next

Abstract

This article presents the results of a survey of the leaders of technical communication groups with 20 or more staff members about their project, people, and business management portfolios and practices. In terms of project management, most technical communication groups primarily produce user’s guides, reference manuals, and help. About half of all technical content is published in print, though online and PDF formats are widely used. Other than technical reviews and editing, no widely used method or metric of assessing effectiveness exists. Similarly, no widely used method or metric of assessing productivity exists among the groups. The two most widely hired job skills are technical writers and managers (both project and people managers). Many technical communication groups report to Development, but not a majority. The term technical communication is widely used in the department name and job title of people working in this field. Because of the tightly defined population and the limited response to the survey, the results cannot be generalized to all technical communicators.