I have often mulled upon the career progression for technical communicators. A technical communicator can always choose to write, review and publish through his/her professional life but there is significant risk of stagnation, because of three reasons:
• In the same project/organization or domain the documentation will soon become robust and the documentation repository will only need updates, edits and innovations. The classic Software Engineer’s frustration of being involved in maintenance and defect fixing assignments only, will also manifest in the technical communicators’ life.
• Moving across domains, projects and organizations in search of the new and challenging will assist only in horizontal movement and make the writer “jack-of-all-domains” and master of none. Most companies do not want to spend time and money on the learning curve of a technical communicator hence they may not provide the required training and/or senior positions.
• The performance management system in most Indian organizations demands enhanced competencies. Typical appraisal questions include, “What is your contribution to the team and project?” “How have you contributed to organizational growth?” “What skills have you enhanced or acquired?”
The bespectacled, analytical, meekly-churning-out tons of user friendly information, technical communicator’s chances of a good rating are washed out by the barrage of words like learning-curve, all-round contribution, innovation, expertise, competency, process, and procedures.
The only key for survival in the big-bad IT world of techno-managers is to make yourself indispensable and define your own competencies. I am also at a stage where I have to chalk out a further career progression plan. Based on the current market trends, I have been able to define the under mentioned career progression options.
Technical career path:
Authors and communicators who seek progression through technical and project-task based involvement, can advance their careers through:
Subject Matter Expertise: This requires subject matter knowledge and continued study and tasks in an identified domain. Domain certifications, self-study, interaction with other technical experts and business analysts and 3-5 years of dedicated project-based documentation in the selected domain can be defining factors.
Tools expertise and mentoring: A writer who is able to train other writers, answer questions, and provide tips and tricks for various authoring tools or other tools that writers need to do their jobs.
Process improvement and innovation: A writer who improves the efficiency or methodology of a process such as the review process, editing process, or any other process that writers use to do their jobs. They can identify effective estimation, documentation workflow and other techniques to improve work quality.
Consultants or Information Architects: Documentation specialists or consultants who can help plan a complete documentation project and help with prototypes and implementations.
Senior Editors/ Sub Editor; Editor/ Managing Editor; Proof Reader
Cross-departmental career path:
Some writers may chose to explore other parallel domains that require the skills of excellent verbal and written communication along with years of experience in the industry.
Quality Assurance: Another aspect of domain expertise is quality assurance and testing. Writers may want to use their product as well as process-based knowledge to move into the domain of Quality Assurance, at the team and consequently project and organizational level.
Client Interaction or Managing Engagements: Long association with the client and product/domain knowledge can be utilized to develop effective channels between offshore and onsite teams. A technical author can become an Engagement manager or be involved with the Project Management Office and help plan and track projects in the outsourcing model.
Business Development: Strong product and process knowledge teemed with effective communication skills can help the technical author to move into marketing communications and business response or proposal development. A professional degree in business administration can be added benefit.
Corporate Communications: Another field for exploration is corporate communication, and media relations that require dynamic communication skills with extensive knowledge of corporate goals.
Product/Domain based Training: A subject matter expert who doesn’t want to only write, review and mentor at the team/project level can move onto training and developing training material at a corporate level.
Analysis and Research: Support other departments through content-based analysis research and preparing reports and white papers; Edit technical reports for projects, manage publication and produce reports, organize and produce written documents including web-based and traditional publications.
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