Teams and Stars

All-star teams lose. While it’s an honor to be chosen to an all-star team, it’s miserable to play on one. These teams are constructed without consideration for how to bring people together. Whenever an all-star team plays a mediocre, but intact team, they usually lose. The true goal of any team is not to have the best players for each position: it's to succeed. Success comes when a team makes use of the team's abilities towards a goal, something you don’t get merely by picking the best players at each position.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2001). Articles>Collaboration

Teamwork and the Product Documentation Process

Get to know your new teammates. Get to know your audience. Define the product's features. Create a mockup of the user interface. Begin to document the features and interface.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Geoff-Hart.com (1997). Articles>Documentation>Project Management>Collaboration

Technical Assistance for Writers in the Workplace: Some Heuristic Uses of Professional Writing Techniques in a Multiauthor Writing Process     

Linda Flower's work serves as the basis for devising writing technical assistance in three case studies of multiauthor reports. One major barrier to audience-based writing, planning—and, hence, producing readable text—is the writer-based structure embodied in a project's work program. Writing technical assistance can help displace this structure by various means, including collaborative writing. But the interaction between the two activities basic to writing—creating specific audience-based goals and devising a new hierarchical structure for content knowledge—remains unclear in theory and in practice.

Baker, Linda. Technical Communication Online (1996). Articles>Collaboration>Workflow>Writing

Technical Communication as Business Strategy: How Changes in Discursive Patterns Affect the Value of Technical Communication in Cross-Functional Team Settings    

Business seldom views technical communicators' contributions as offering strategic thinking and services. Companies tend to view technical communicators as tactical and technical, rather than strategic and creative. Consequently, often in cross-functional development settings the ideas and recommendations of technical communicators are not valued in the same way that ideas from business strategists, marketing, or other fields are. This paper details a case study in which the role of an information architect, a title that more and more technical communicators use to describe themselves, becomes valued by a design firm's client and by the firm itself as strategic business advantage. I explain why the role of the information architect increased in value and how the increased value changed the job description. I look at how blending knowledge occurs through shifts in terminology, imitation of another field, and selling new concepts.

Norton, David W. Technical Communication Online (2000). Articles>Collaboration>Workflow

The Technical Communicator's Role in Initiating Cross-Functional Teams    

This article focuses on cross-functional teams in software development environments. While very formal approaches to cross-functional teams exist, this article focuses on less formal approaches based on existing literature and case studies. Technical communicators are ideal candidates for implementing cross-functional teams on an informal level. Because of this, they can also be excellent catalysts for initiating formal cross-functional approaches in their organizations, even if their organizations have never used cross-functional teams before.

Marchwinski, Theresa and Karen Mandziuk. Technical Communication Online (2000). Articles>Collaboration>Workflow

The Technical Editor as Diplomat: Linguistic Strategies for Balancing Clarity and Politeness     

An essential component of technical editors' work is to convey to writers how their documents would benefit from revision. This task is potentially sensitive, given writers' intellectual and emotional investment in the documents they have created. The sensitive nature of the editing process is clear in Rude's (2001) advice to students of technical editing: '[A]void words that suggest inappropriate editorial intervention, especially change ' (p. 43). Rude's advice suggests an awareness of the difficulty inherent in imposing oneself into the creative process of another person. Because of the defensiveness they might encounter in writers, editors must be cognizant of how they carry out their jobï¿the language they use to convey necessary changes to writers' documents. The language editors use can either facilitate good working relationships with writers or degrade those relationships.

Mackiewicz, Jo M. and Kathryn Riley. Technical Communication Online (2003). Articles>Editing>Collaboration

Technical Writer/Subject Matter Expert Interaction: The Writer's Perspective, the Organizational Challenge    

Almost a decade ago, Walkowski's (1991) study of the interaction between subject-matter experts (SMEs) and technical writers focused on the perceptions of software engineers toward technical writers. Her findings gave technical writers insights on how to improve critical relationships with these organizational colleagues. This study partially replicates Walkowski's (1991) study of technical writer-SME interactions, but instead of collecting data from SMEs, we surveyed technical writers themselves. We report perceptions collected from 31 technical writers and contrast them with Walkowski's original findings, offering interpersonal and organizational recommendations for addressing tensions between these groups. By examining both the SMEs' and the technical writers' perceptions of their relationship, we are able to provide a two-sided view of a dynamic and complex interaction. We also argue that participants in the SME-technical writer interaction cannot fully alter their relationship without the strategic supp

Lee, Martha F. and Brad Mehlenbacher. Technical Communication Online (2000). Articles>Collaboration>Technical Writing>SMEs

Techniques for Successful SME Interviews  

Lambe offers tips for gathering information from SMEs.

Lambe, Jennifer L. Intercom (2000). Articles>Interviewing>Collaboration>SMEs

TECHWR-L: A History and Case Study of a Profession-Specific Listserv List    

Until Spring 1993, technical communicators had few Internet resources of their own. They could find common ground in forums oriented toward specific word processing programs and other tools of the trade, but they had no place to discuss profession-specific, rather than tool-specific, issues. TECHWR-L was founded that spring, and the growth, development, and response to the list has been remarkable. Most significant, however, is the effect that TECHWR-L has had on individual technical communicators worldwide. It demonstrates that the Internet can and should be used to provide more focused and comprehensive resources to technical communicators in the future. This case study outlines the growth and development of TECHWR-L, discusses some of the more controversial aspects of the list, and outlines how TECHWR-L or some other focused forum could prove an even more valuable resource for the profession.

Ray, Eric J. Technical Communication Online (1996). Articles>Collaboration>Mailing Lists>Technical Writing

Ten Strategies for Consilience

Can we achieve a true convergence among fields, with science and the humanities working in tandem to produce knowledge? This paper attempts eight rhetorical and two political strategies in a 'gedanken experiment' to assess which among them might meet with greatest success in achieving that congruence.  Some of the strategies will be adaptations of prominent writers, including theorists in Technical Communication.  The question whether science and the humanities should, in fact, operate from the same attitudes and assumptions will be addressed in a final section.

Missimer, Constance A. Orange Journal, The (2001). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building

Ten Sure-Fire Ways to Fail as a Change Agent

In an effort to be less than constructive, here are ten sure-fire ways to alienate and de-motivate your team on your change journey. Hit-or-miss approaches don't go far enough; this is your chance to use the best methods of corporate torture and humiliation developed by dictators, steamrollers and other "tough guy" change agents.

Paulson, Terry L. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Management>Collaboration

Ten Tips for Talking to Artists  

Explains some of the terminology used to describe graphics and explains the roles graphic designers play in the production of technical art.

Lyons, Chopeta C. Intercom (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Technical Illustration>Graphic Design

Textual Grounding: How People Turn Texts Into Tools    

The author argues that users see texts as tools when they recognize the texts' specific value and function within highly localized use settings. The author argues that users "ground" their texts to local use settings by altering the ways in which the texts structure and represent information (e.g., underlining, annotation, and sketching). The author discusses three practices by which texts are grounded as tools in document reviews: mode shifting, layering, and marking. These practices reflect different ways by which users add, subtract, and restructure information in a text so that it is usable under very specific conditions. This article explores document review as a practice in which grounding is the object of discussion (how others use the reviewed documents) and a practice by which review is facilitated. These observations will be important for exploration of technology to support "grounding" practices.

Swarts, Jason. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2004). Articles>TC>Collaboration

The Fallacies of Collaboration: A Critique of Group Work in Technical Communication Pedagogy  

Collaboration through group writing assignments has become an accepted standard activity in most technical communication textbooks and classrooms. Some of the commonly-held fallacies connected with the view of collaboration’s benefits over individual efforts are that it produces better products, creates an equitable distribution of work, and provides greater motivation. It is also erroneously assumed that the success of collaboration depends on the study and effective practice of the principles of group dynamics and that collaborative techniques can accurately simulate “real life” readers and workplace experiences. Further research in group dynamics is required to accurately assess the value of group work in classroom settings.

Shirk, Henrietta Nickels. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Education>Collaboration

The Gloria Jaffe Outstanding Technical Communicator Award - Using Deserved Recognition to Strengthen the Local Impact of an STC Chapter  

In 2002, the Orlando Chapter of STC initiated a new competition to encourage local area and employer recognition of excellence in technical communication. In establishing the award, the Orlando Chapter increased its dialog with employers, helped raised the visibility of the profession in the area, honored its founder and its continuing relationship with a local university, and increased its level of service to chapter members. This paper describes the objectives established for the award program, how it was judged, and how the chapter benefited from its creation.

Fellure, Alicia, Mike Murray and W.C. Wiese. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building>STC

The Use of Humor, Metaphor, Psychology, and Sheer Zaniness to Defuse Volatile Situations, Lower Your Blood Pressure, and Support Stress Management in Technical Communication: Real-World Applications of M4A4Z4 Theory  

This workshop explores the creative use of humor as a de-stressor in the often deadline-driven, pressure-filled world of technical communication, while also addressing the inherent risks involved with this strategy. Three specific techniques involving metaphor, psychology, and incongruity are exemplified in the opening presentation. Participants then form teams to apply these techniques and other strategies to relieve stress in volatile business/technical scenarios.

Voss, Daniel W. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Workplace

This Is Too Formal for Us: A Case Study of Variation in the Written Products of a Multinational Consortium    

This article reports a case study of three multinational companies that work together in a consortium, focusing on intercompany and intracompany variation in writing products and processes. The authors discuss variation in two genres: meeting minutes and internal memos. Adopting a social constructionist, communities of practice (CofP) approach, they argue that the companies form overarching constellations of CofP. Although the participants broadly work with the same genres of written documents, the form of these documents varies according to the local context, audience, and purpose. The authors discuss the implications of their findings, with particular reference to the difficulty writers face when they make the transition from writing for one community of practice to writing for another.

Angouri, Jo and Nigel Harwood. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2008). Articles>Business Communication>Collaboration

Time-Consuming Email Communications

Our documentation and advertising bureau mails five emails with attachments on the average per day to different customers, partners and other service organisations. The sizes of the attachments vary roughly from 50 KB up to 2 MB. About 60% of our emails with attachments don't create any problems with the addressee. However, 40% need additional attention. This fraction causes communication problems.

Thiele, Ulrich. TC-FORUM (2000). Articles>Collaboration>Correspondence>Email

Tips for Negotiating

Negotiation is a part of life, though we may not always think of it in conscious terms. Although this article is written from the perspective of a consultant bidding on a project, the concepts of negotiation apply to many situations where you are trying to reach agreement with someone.

Snyder, Carolyn. Usability Professionals Association (2005). Articles>Collaboration

Tips for Tech Writers Interviewing Engineers: Building a Strong Relationship with Developers

Outside of the formal SME interview, a writer's relationship with engineers and experts is built on trust, respect, and a little bit of bribery.

Bryant, Stephanie. Suite101 (2008). Articles>Collaboration>Interviewing>SMEs

Together Everyone Achieves More!

The highest priority for team members is achieving the team’s goals. There may be team members who have strong personalities, possess highly specialized skills, and commit themselves to a variety of personal objectives—but the most important thing is the success of the group. To function effectively, members of a team must be flexible, trust one another, and wholeheartedly support every member of the group in its progress toward achieving its goals.

Laurent, J. Suzanna. STC Central Iowa (2001). Articles>Collaboration>TC

Tools for Distributed Development

When it comes to working on distributed teams or one with global development partners spread around the world, you need to use every tool you can to make interaction easier.

Mawdsley, Jason. Dr. Dobb's (2007). Articles>Collaboration>Technology

Top Ten Worst Things SMEs Say or Do

In this podcast, I interview Brenda Huettner about strategies for overcoming the top 10 Worst Things Subject Matter Experts Say or Do.

Huettner, Brenda P. Tech Writer Voices (2007). Articles>Interviews>Collaboration>SMEs