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The Commerce of Content
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As the last part of planning the project, you need to identify all of the people who will be assigned to working on it. In some instances, the people have already been assisting with the project in the design phase, but at this point, you clarify their roles.
Two types of roles exist on a technical communication project: client roles and technical communication roles. One of your challenges as a technical communicator is blending the people and their roles into an effective work team. The next several sections describe the various client and technical communication roles, and offer suggestions for fostering a successful work team.
In this Section: |
The client represents the client organization, the department or company that the client works for. The client and client and the client organization play these roles.
Paying client, (also called the executive sponsor or benefactor: The executive with responsibility for the project. Although you will not have much contact with this person, recognize that this is the person who can authorize or stop payment for a project and who must ultimately feel satisfied with the results.
Subject Matter Expert (s) (SME): One or more people who developed the technical content that will be addressed by the information product.
| For this Type of Information | The SMEs Usually Are |
| Software documentation | System designers and programmers who designed and developed the software. |
| Other types of product documentation | Engineers who designed and developed the product. |
| Scientific and technical reports | Scientists who conducted original research and need to communicate the results to the public. |
| Environmental safety and health materials | Scientists and engineers who conducted site research and need to communicate the results to a government organization and the groups within the general public whom are affected by the research. |
| Proposals | Engineers who will be providing the technical services or designing the products requested by the client of the client. |
Your project may have one or more SMEs. For large software projects that involve large teams of software designers and programmers, you might deal with several SMEs. For a scientific report, you likely work directly with a single scientist. .
SMEs usually focus on the completeness and accuracy of the technical content. They are concerned that your precisely report information; a misused word often raises their concern. For example, when a technical communicator wrote "This word processor has Internet access," the SME expressed concern. The word processor can produce text that users can use as home pages on the World Wide Web on the Internet, but it does not let users use the Internet.
Although SMEs are well-versed in the technical content, they approach it from their own perspective as the one who developed the content, rather than as a user of that content. As a result, SMEs often request that you include more information than users want; the additional information could easily distract users from successfully completing the task at hand. In such instances, you need to exercise your judgment about what information benefits users and which will not.
Marketing: A representative of the group that has responsibility for sales of the product or service discussed in the information product. Technical communicators usually work with a market planner, the person whose responsibility is identifying the needs of a market, translating those needs into requirements for a product, making sure that the product meets those requirements, then planning a strategy for making the public of the product or service and encouraging the public to purchase that product or service.
Marketing (as technical communicators usually refer to this representative of the client) usually plays a role in documentation about products and services and in proposals. Because scientific reports and envinroment health and safety information usually is not directly marketed, marketing does not play a role in these projects.
Marketing is primarily concerned with the way you represent the product or service in your information product. Represetatives of marketing generally try to make sure that your information product addresses the perceived needs of the people who will be purchasing the product or service and that the information product positively reflects the product or service.
Legal: A representative of the corporate legal department. The legal reviewer is concerned about these issues:
Actual or implied promises or warranties. If the document says that the product or service does something, the product must do it or the client’s organization has liability. For example, one organization misprinted the price of a $10,500 service as $3,500. The company had to provide the service at the lower price or risk a lawsuit.
Proper use of intellectual property. Intellectual property are the ideas and concepts developed by an organization that give it an edge in the marketplace. One type of intellectual property is a trade secret. Corporations do not purposely release trade secrets to the public, unless certain precautions are taken. The legal department makes sure that you only provide the information that users have a need to know.
Users: The people who will read and apply the information in the information product.
| For this Type of Information | The Users Usually Are |
| Software and product documentation | The people who actually use the product. |
| Scientific and technical reports | Other scientists and engineers |
| Environmental safety and health | Representatives of governmental agencies, general public |
| Proposals | Varies by customer |
Users are primarily concerned with the usability of the information. Many users usually assess usability as:
In a real project, some client representatives serve in one role, in other projects, a single client representative serves several roles. The level of involvement by client representatives also varies, depending on the combinations of roles they play, other responsibilities they have, and their interest in the project. Some client representatives play a central role in a project; others only play a role on paper.
The process of developing information products requires the skills of a variety of communiction specialists. These specialists include the following.
| Medium | Production Skills Needed |
| Printed materials | Desktop publishing skills. |
| Online materials | Authoring and programming skills. Authoring is the skill of using specialized software, called authoring systems, to prepare information for presentation online. Programmers assist with those situations when authoring systems can not present information as the technical communicator planned. |
| Video presentations | Television production skills, which includes camera and sound technicians, video editing (the process of taking various scenes, usually shot out of order, and assembling them onto a single videotape), acting and narration, and directing. |
| Audio presentations | Sound production skills, which include narration and sound editing (compiling recordings made at separate times into a cohesive whole). |
In an ideal project, different people assume each of these different roles, letting each teach member focus on their area of expertise. And some projects are idea. Many others, however, require that one person assume two or more of these roles. For example, a technical writer might also have to serve as the production personnel and graphic artist on a project. Because many people assume several communication roles on a project, we refer to them as technical communicators rather than in more limiting terms such as technical writer or technical editor.
Related Resources:
How to Set Project Guidelines |
Project Management | People Management | Business Management | Information Design Models, Processes, and Techniques | Home
(c) Copyright. 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002. Saul Carliner. All rights reserved.
