Measuring the Value Added by Technical Documentation: A Review of Research and Practice    

Like any business activity, technical documentation must add value to a company’s product or service. This article reviews the principles by which the value of technical documentation can be measured, as shown by recent research in technical communication and other fields. Documentation value is the relationship of the cost of documentation to the total monetary value returned. Cost can be established through careful benchmarking. Monetary value can be returned in one or more of three fundamental ways: reducing internal investment; directly improving return on investment through increased sales; and reducing after-sales costs, such as support. While studies exist showing value added in all three categories, the second category, direct translation of increased documentation investment into increased sales, deserves the closest attention. Further, increased research in this area will lead to an improved understanding of information as the product itself, rather than simply a supporting component. Finally, doc

Mead, Jay. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>TC>Assessment

Measuring Value Added: Rationale and Approaches  

This panel will present case studies on the value added by technical communicators and their information products to the products and services they support. Many of us practitioners would like to do more value-adding assessments, but don’t know how to adapt the measures to our real-world situations of limited budget and often limited interest among our customers. The panel will focus on practical approaches for applying some of the metrics used to calculate the value of our products and services (1,2). We will also discuss the benefits of this exercise for ourselves and our customers. With the current economic clime, waiting for others to determine the value of their work often means waiting in unemployment lines.

Knodel, Elinor L., Sandra M. Gallagher, Judith Leetham, Theresa Marchwinski, Amy E. Smith and Emily A. Sopensky. STC Proceedings (1996). Presentations>TC>Assessment

Media Selection Chart

Guidelines to choose the best media for presenting your course Web site content.

Barnum, Carol M. and Saul Carliner. University of Minnesota (1993). Design>Multimedia>Assessment

Review: The Metaphysics of Information Quality: Comments on Producing Quality Technical Information    

The expressed promise in the title of Producing Quality Technical Information is that following its prescriptions will yield 'quality' technical information. This commentary asks what the term quality means here and whether the manual delivers on its promise. In other words, which of the several senses of quality is intended in the title, and the does the publication deliver as promised? That is, which of the major quality schemes corresponds to the rationale of the text: legalistic quality, in which quality is conformity to a long list of detailed regulations and specifications (as in ISO 9000); principle-based quality, in which quality is the result of working according to a small set of broad precepts; or mystical quality, in which quality is an indefinable property or spiritual construct, toward which virtuous people should aspire.

Weiss, Edmond H. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Reviews>Quality>Assessment

Method to Evaluate Manuals and Online Help  

In these testing times when time to market for software is constantly diminishing, the demand to make manuals and online help targeted, faster, cheaper and better is a tall order. While methods and tools are being constantly developed to help us do our work faster, and better, measuring the quality of the written word remains a deficient arena. Technical Communications gurus advocate methods like surveys and usability to make better end products. However, this requires good infrastructure and management support to carry out. This paper provides a method to evaluate technical manuals and online help for software products. It discusses how you can gauge a manual’s quality and suggests a method to quantify its effectiveness. It is cheap to implement and is customizable for your organization. All you need is good knowledge of your audience, and some faith and persistence!

Santhanam, Raji. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Documentation>Assessment>Help

Methods for Documentation Testing in Technical Publications Quality Assurance  

Traditionally, verification of documentation procedure accuracy follows a standard model: technical communicators prepare a draft, which is submitted to subject matter experts for review. This process hinges on a number of factors that can adversely affect the quality of the review. Higher quality reviews are conducted by staff tasked specifically to test and review the draft procedures, and supply specific feedback by means of an established procedure. A well-established method of documentation testing provides several benefits to an organization. These include customer satisfaction, reduced costs, improved overall product quality, and improved document draft correction.

Lippincott, Richard J. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Documentation>Quality>Assessment

More Results on Measuring the Value Added by Professional Technical Communicators  

Measuring value added is a topic of great concern to technical communicators. At the 1994 conference, represented results from a year-long project that included a questionnaire and several case studies. STC then funded a second, smaller project in which we are following up with some of the people who responded to the questionnaire and in which we are collecting new case studies.

Ramey, Judith A. and Janice C. 'Ginny' Redish. STC Proceedings (1995). Presentations>TC>Assessment

Moving from Information Transfer to Knowledge Creation: A New Value Proposition for Technical Communicators    

This article first reviews the current literature that addresses the value of the technical communicator. Whereas those discussions focus on what is delivered to the user (reader), this article examines the value the technical communicator adds by creating organization (internal) knowledge. The article then examines the philosophical underpinnings that support any discussion of knowledge and defines the role of technical communicators as creators of knowledge. Finally, it offers an expanded value proposition for technical communicators and examines its practical implications.

Hughes, Michael A. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>TC>Assessment

The Myth of Optimal Web Design

Perfection in design is not possible. No matter how much is known about a given business, user group or technology, you can not simultaneously satisfy all possible objectives. For any website or user interface, there are no mathematics, and no algorithms, for deciding which objectives to satisfy in a single design, or even forThe swiss army knife: a balance of interesting design tradeoffs accurately defining an optimal solution within any of those objectives. There are usability, design and business methods that effectively evaluate and illuminate promising directions , but they are sensitive tools, that work more as guides, rather than maps. In general, any form of design involves too many simultaneous possible objectives and forms of solutions to enable any overall mathematical or algorithmic based confidence. An optimal design, in the broadest sense, is a mythical idea.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2001). Articles>Web Design>Assessment

The Myths and Methods of Reputation Measurement

If you are concerned about your reputation and want to measure its health, here's what to do. Get the communication people in your organization together in a room and get consensus on what you want to measure and which constituencies are your top priorities. Determine how a good relationship with each of those constituencies benefits your organization. Your success is measured by achieving those benefits. Figure out what you will be measuring and what benchmarks you will be measuring against. Undertake the appropriate research and voila, you'll have the answers you need.

Paine, Katie. Communication World Bulletin (2005). Articles>Business Communication>Public Relations>Assessment

Nine Quality Characteristics and a Process to Check for Them  

We all know what differentiates a great piece of technical communication from an average one...but can you articulate specifically what quality looks like in your work? Can you list the characteristics that all successful pieces of technical communication share? Can you repeatedly produce technical information that is of the highest quality? By using a checklist based on the nine characteristics of quality described in Developing Quality Technical Information, you can develop specific checkpoints for your design and development process to ensure that your end product, your technical information, meets these characteristics.

Fisher, Lori H. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Tutorials>Assessment

Not Getting Personal: Assessing Website Effectiveness  

Websites are sometimes evaluated primarily on first impressions or personal preference. More difficult to ascertain is their success in terms of communication. Assessments of websites can benefit from research and developments from fields such as usability studies, linguistics, professional writing, and rhetoric.

Durham, Marsha. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Web Design>Assessment>Usability

“Observable Objects”: Assessing a Study of Instructors’ Grading

We asked TAs who were using a common assignment sequence to turn in student papers responding to a prompt which asked for the analysis of information in a piece by Clifford Geertz.  We invited departmental instructors to read four unmarked papers and to grade them using the citeria for evaluation that had been given to the students and used by their instructors. These criteria were customized for the assignment from a one-page list of course criteria, not unlike the “outcomes” document recently published by the WPA.  Our idea was simply to see the grading by TAs, lecturers and tenured faculty.   We put the grades on a chart, which showed that there was not perfect consistency of grading for any one paper.  Some were very close, but some papers received a wide array of grades.  The departmental review took place just after we had collected these data, and we shared with the reviewers this interpretive but uninterpreted document.

Quandahl, Ellen. Lore (2001). Articles>Education>Assessment

Obtaining User Feedback: How Useful Are Your Online Help Systems?  

Surveys or questions posed to users may not be entirely useful when determining whether a user's experience with the help feature was successful or not. The author provides instructions on implementing a tool that will provide this kind of feedback.

Webb, Jeremy. Intercom (2006). Articles>Documentation>Online>Assessment

Our Students' Audiences: What Do Employers and Faculty Really Want?  

Business communication courses teach written and oral communication skills with an emphasis on using technology. This study asks 221 South Texas employers and 212 faculty members of a regional university to rate employees’ and students’ communication skill competencies. The survey asked 12 questions—four about written competencies, five on verbal, and three on technology skills. Employers consistently rated employees higher than faculty rated students. The ratings offer implications for the business communication course—basic grammar and punctuation need to be emphasized.

Bennington, Ashley J. Association for Business Communication (2005). Careers>Management>Communication>Assessment

Perceptions Of Memo Quality: A Case Study Of Engineering Practitioners, Professors, and Students    

One goal of college technical writing courses is to prepare students for real-world writing situations. Business writing textbooks function similarly, using guidelines, sample assignments, and model documents to help students develop rhetorical strategies to use in the workplace. Students attend class, or read and perform exercises in a textbook, with the faith that these skills will apply to workplace writing. In an attempt to better understand the similarities and differences between industry and academe's expectations of one genre of workplace writing, the memo, we compared the perceptions of memo quality by engineering faculty, students, and practitioners. All three groups responded to three sample memos taken from textbooks used by engineering professors in their undergraduate classrooms. The results indicate that students' and engineers' opinions of memo quality were more closely related to one another than to professors' comments, focusing on content, while professors were the most critical of style issues.

Amare, Nicole and Charlotte Brammer. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2005). Articles>Writing>Assessment>Engineering

Performing Publications Needs Assessments  

A publications needs assessment is a way to identify and analyze documentation and publishing needs for a project, group or company. The technical communicator can use these assessments to ensure that the proper documentation and publishing services are provided. This paper describes a four step approach to performing publications needs assessments.

Devlin, John T. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Documentation>Planning>Assessment

The Pitfalls of Financial Benchmarking

Recently I spent two hours with a management consultant trying to help her identify appropriate metrics for benchmarking a client's communication function. Some of the initial financial measurements that were being considered raised some concerns.

Sinickas, Angela D. Sinickas Communications (1999). Articles>Management>Communication>Assessment

Portfolios Across the Curriculum: Whole School Assessment in Kentucky  

When the Kentucky Supreme Court declared the public education system unconstitutional in 1989 and the legislature passed the Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) to revamp the existing system, we Kentucky English teachers became involved in the broadest reform ever attempted by any state in the nation. As part of the reform, a yearly state-wide performance-based assessment of each school was instituted in 1991. Along with other components, the assessment included a writing portfolio, holistically-graded by teachers in each school, that would count 14% in the total assessment.

Moore, Lizabeth and David R. Russell. English Journal, The (2001). Academic>Portfolios>Assessment

Practical and Effective Metrics  

Discusses several issues involved in developing metrics that measure performance and identify specific problems affecting performance.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Intercom (2004). Careers>Management>Assessment

Practitioner's Perspective

The biggest challenge for auditors is to make sure that they're measuring the right things. All too often communicators measure only their outputs—the messages and channels they're producing—without connecting them to the outcomes of using these outputs.

Sinickas, Angela D. Sinickas Communications (2003). Articles>Business Communication>Assessment

A Practitioners' Citation Index?    

Whether articles have been applied on the job or have simply expanded our mastery of the field, how can we tell which articles practitioners find useful? This is the question I've wrestled with over the past three months. Unfortunately, supplying an answer isn't as easy as asking the question.

Hayhoe, George F. Technical Communication Online (2005). Articles>Publishing>Assessment

Program Revision and Assessment

Four presentations about program assessment and the revisions to programs that they suggest.

Eble, Michelle F., Ann S. Jennings, Janice Tovey and Sherry Southard. CPTSC (2005). Presentations>Education>Assessment

Program Revision and Assessment II  

Four presentations about exigences that are leading to change and innovation in technical communication academic programs.

Smith Taylor, Summer, Karen Kuralt, Elizabeth Pass and Wanda L. Worley. CPTSC (2005). Presentations>Education>Assessment

Proposal to Support ABET Accreditation for Technical Communication Programs

The Ad Hoc Committee on Accreditation recommends that the IEEE Professional Communication Society act as the sponsoring cognizant technical society to present technical communication program criteria to the Related Accreditation Commission (RAC) of Accreditation Body for Engineering and Technology (ABET). This report contains the background documentation for this recommendation.

Davis, Marjorie T., Leslie Olsen and Mark P. Haselkorn. Mercer University (1998). Academic>Education>Assessment>Engineering