Information Development at Rockwell Software – Part 1: Organizational Issues and Work Process  

Establishing and maintaining good relationships with internal customers is essential for technical writers. In our case, engineers are our internal customers and managing professional relationships with them can be challenging. At Rockwell Software, writers are matrixed into engineering organizations. This diffuses technical writing’s presence, but it gives us access to information we might not have if we were in a separate department. Given this organization, we have found that establishing personal relationships with engineers before focusing on work helps ensure our success. Finally, usability testing serves as a place where engineers and writers can focus on the success of their product as a whole.

Butler, Scott A., Eric J. Grabowski and Myron M. Shawala III. STC Proceedings (1998). Careers>TC>Collaboration