EDU 670
March 13, 2004
Single Sourcing and Technical Publications Organizations
This research examined and investigated the effects of single sourcing methodologies on technical publication organizations. The sample consisted of technical communicator respondents who volunteered to complete a survey posted on an Internet website. The qualitative study described the organization changes in the technical publications group as observed by these respondents. The respondents’ names were not included in the data sent to this writer; therefore, their anonymity was protected. Analysis consisted of evaluation of essay answers for themes and trends observed and reported by qualified respondents participating in the survey. Results of this research reveal that few organizational changes were caused by the implementation of single sourcing.
Single sourcing has become a hot topic in the field of technical communications over the past five years. In simple terms, single sourcing is best defined as one input used for several outputs. Currently, there are two approaches to single sourcing. One approach requires technical writers to use desktop publishing software, such as FrameMaker, to construct and format their products or output. The output, that is to say, deliverables may be in the form of paper manuals; web-based documents like user guides; online help; and training guides. Some companies have chosen the high-end solution and purchased a content management system (CMS) and utilize Extensible Markup Language as their preferred method of single sourcing.
Without single sourcing, Technical Publications organizations include several different types of roles and responsibilities. They have technical writers, editors, multimedia specialists, and graphic designers. With the exception of the multimedia specialists, and graphic designers, most technical publications groups have done away with the editor’s position as a cost-saving measure. That leaves the technical writer to perform a multitude of tasks. These tasks are writing, editing, template design, tools expert, and production specialist. Eventually, the writer functions as “a jack of all trades and a master of none” in those groups without single sourcing.
In groups that have implemented single sourcing, the roles and responsibilities appear to change. The environment changes from one where a writer is solely responsible for one product or manual, for example, to one where a team of writers contribute to several products. It seems that if the environment, responsibilities, and contributions change, a logical step would include a change in the technical writers’ roles and responsibilities.
This research will examine and investigate the effects of single sourcing methodologies on technical publication organizations. It has been postulated that the implementation of single sourcing causes changes in the roles and responsibilities of technical communicators. What are these effects or changes? How are the new roles to be organized and defined?
One of the advantages of a research project on “metawriting” (writing about writing) is that there are countless articles available. Further, because of the recent boon of the single sourcing technology, there are numerous organizations experiencing the changes. To narrow the topic, the concentration of this study will focus on the organizational changes required to successfully implement and produce deliverables in a technical publications department.
All of the literature discusses the changes that take place within technical publications organizations. Some organizations choose to create new job titles, revise roles, and responsibilities. Other articles, which were read for this study, but not included, pertained to managerial responsibilities, expectations, and conflict resolution. While this study asks questions from the viewpoint of ignorance, meaning, “Do the changes occur? What are these effects or changes? How are the new roles to be organized and defined?” From the articles, it seems evident that the changes are visible and will be described and explained during this study.
The next sections outline the research method, sampling plan, and design of this research study.
The population for this study is managers, technical writers, editors, graphic designers, and multimedia specialists in Technical Publications organizations.
A brief email request will be posted on the TechWrl listserver introducing the survey with a hyperlink to the survey. The TechWrl (pronounced tech whirler and a contraction for technical writer list) is open to all technical writers, managers, and communicators. The sample will consist of those respondents who voluntarily fill out the posted survey on the website. The survey will be posted for approximately 4 days and the deadline for participation will be included in the introductory email.
External validity may, indeed be slightly compromised, if one considers that all participants must have a computer and an Internet connection. However, in the field of technical communications, computers are required equipment to perform their jobs. Another slightly dicey prospect is that the respondents will all be volunteers, i.e., self-selected participants. Now, there is a danger that those volunteers may be somewhat different than the population of technical communicators. Companies implementing single sourcing, an advanced technique for managing and producing documentation, are on the cutting edge of this technology. It seems likely that they would hire top-notch technical communicator professionals. Part of that professional development would include keeping up to date with the latest technologies and best practices of other professionals in the industry. One of the ways of exchanging information between technical writers is through TechWrl.
The qualitative design employed in this study is mainly focused on the research questions with the addition of two qualifying questions and two classification questions. For a complete copy of the survey, see Appendix B.
The open-ended questions are asked of respondents already familiar with the terms single sourcing. Single sourcing has been previously defined as one input used for several outputs. In order to qualify for participation, it is important for the respondents to have already started the implementation process. Since this study seeks to gain information pertaining to organization changes affected by single sourcing techniques, respondents must be in the implementation process or have completed the process in order to observe the organization changes. Two questions, which provide information for classification purposes: job title and number of years as a technical communicator, have been included. Respondents’ answers will be analyzed to determine whether the organization changes were observed and if other trends or themes appear. These trends will be discussed in more detail in the Results section of this paper.
One further piece of raw data, which provides proof that the survey data was not tampered with by any respondent, is the remote host information. See Appendix C to review the raw data shown in spreadsheet format. This spreadsheet identifies each answer by respondent. Empty cells indicate no response. No editing has been performed on any of the respondent’s answers.
This study will employ a descriptive research design to examine the changes in Technical Publications organizations as a result of the implementation of single sourcing methodologies.
A single internal validity issue may be involved in this study. Rather than conducting interviews or selecting the sample participants, the respondents volunteer to participate in the survey. This may not be a randomized selection of sample by the researcher; however, those that complete the survey are randomly selecting themselves.
Because the purpose of this research is to determine the effects of single sourcing on Technical Publications organizations, the research question was narrowed to include only those questions and germane sub-questions. The sample for this study was not so much selected as much as it was offered. To clarify, an email was sent to two listservs, Framer and TechWrl, to introduce myself, the survey, and its purpose. See Appendix A to read a copy of the email sent to the Framers listserv. Respondents wishing to participate in the survey were advised to go to a website and complete the survey before a specific deadline to be included in the results. The survey was posted on a free website under a page created for this purpose and is located at www.oocities.org/harker_gradschool. The results of the survey, along with their remote host location identifier were sent via email from the hosting website to the author’s personal email address. These emails contained the answers given by the respondent and the remote host location. There were 22 participants in this study; two of whom was disqualified. The reason for disqualification, as defined in the Measures section, was that this participant had not begun implementation of single sourcing. All respondents were included in the spreadsheet of raw interview data and can be seen in Appendix C.
An analysis will be performed and results will be presented as general frequencies in the Results section. Moreover, the Discussion section will present findings and recommendations from the research study.
The single sourcing survey consisted of eight questions and provided one area for other comments. One of the questions, Question 1, (hereafter, Q1) was a close-ended question and the other (Q2) used a rating scale of 0-100 percent. The remaining four questions were all open-ended with space provided for the respondent to type in their answers. No restrictions were placed on the length of any of the open-ended questions. The final piece of data, which was not provided by the respondent, contained the remote host location. This location provided proof that a single respondent did not answer the survey multiple times or tamper with the results in any way.
The survey was completed by a total of 22 respondents. Two of the respondents were disqualified because they had not yet begun their implementation of single sourcing as defined in the Measures section. Since the survey addressed organization changes observed within their company, their responses have not been included in the final results. For a complete copy of the survey, see Appendix B.
When the respondents were asked for an estimate of how far they had progressed in the implementation process of a single sourcing solution, the results ranged from 0-100 percent. See Figure 1 for a pie chart of the frequency distributions. The pie chart represents the number of respondents who answered a specific percentage, and their responses have been grouped into six categories representing a range of these percentages. These ranges and their associated colors are listed in the legend at the bottom of the chart. The actual frequencies are shown alongside of the colored shape on the pie chart. For example, if a respondent gave an answer that stated his/her company had progressed 50% through the implementation or conversion process, the respondent’s answer would fall in the aqua-colored shape.
No analysis was done on the reported single sourcing solutions (Q2) other than to note that nearly all of the companies were using FrameMaker as their single sourcing solution, either alone, in combination with a content management system, or with other desktop publishing software applications. These answers would be as expected since this survey was distributed to the TechWrL and Framers listservs; technical communicators subscribing to these listservs are typically heavy/sophisticated users of FrameMaker software.
The main purpose of this survey was to determine whether the implementation of a single sourcing solution affected any organization changes within the technical publications organizations. Q4 was fashioned to establish if the organization was affected. The final tally on Q4 was that 10% of respondents stated their organization experienced a reorganization of writing roles, responsibilities, or titles. No reorganization was involved in 85% of the organizations surveyed. See Table 1 for a complete breakdown of frequencies and percentages.
Other organization changes experienced were addressed by Q5. The most frequent response to this question was that no additional organization changes were experienced as reported by 60% of respondents. Textual analysis of these answers reveals that 35% of respondents stated that their organizations did see evidence of changes other than to the organization. These changes fall into the following categories: experienced lay-offs/attrition, used a consultant, added a translation coordinator, tracked content/shared work, and consolidated writing and training functions. The identified categories are not strictly organization changes, per se; they are more of an explanation offered on other factors or issues that had to be accommodated by the organization. These issues involve corporate decisions on layoffs, attrition, consultants, new hires, and consolidation of departmental functions. Only one of the categories pertains to the technical publications organization and that category identifies a new, yet expected, method used within the department. This method is a direct result of single sourcing – tracked content/shared work.
To account for all possible organization changes, Q6 requested information about how the new roles were defined. The four responses to this question identify different reasons for and different solutions to the issues in a conversion to single sourcing. One respondent explained the complexity of conditional text used in “eight different deliverables from the same source” and spiraling translations’ costs. His company’s solution was to hire a translation coordinator. Another respondent clarified that the writer is now responsible for developing training materials. A third respondent stated a philosophical difference in his company’s approach. In the past, the company used to centralize functions within a single state, thus, creating a situation whereby writers “knew a little about a lot.” After single sourcing, the company’s philosophy was to decentralize writers, which resulted in the writers knowing “a lot about a little” and created a “much more cohesive” group. The final respondent explained that one writer would “spend more time as [Document Type Definition] owner…bug-tracker”, but the organization did not “expect these changes to be formalized in any way.”
To identify the levels of respondents, the survey asked for their job titles (Q7). See Table 2 for a list of job titles reported, their frequencies, and percentages.
The last question (Q8) identifies the number of years each respondent had been a technical communicator. See Figure 2 for a breakdown of respondents and their years in technical communications.
To read each respondent’s complete answer as it was submitted in the other comments section (Q9), see Appendix C.
Over the past several decades, the perception among business people has been that technology eliminates jobs. During this same period, these same people have realized that the technology did not eliminate jobs, but rather changed the complexion of some jobs. This research study investigated the effects of single sourcing on technical publications organizations. The technology associated with a single sourcing solution has neither reduced jobs, nor substantially changed writing roles, responsibilities, or titles in technical publications organizations.
There is a need for additional future research on this topic to monitor different single sourcing solutions and their effects on those organizations. However, it seems safe to state that single sourcing solutions, which utilize FrameMaker alone or combined with other software applications, do not affect technical publications organizations.
Albers, M.J. (2003, August). Single sourcing and the technical communication career path. Technical Communication: Journal of the Society for Technical Communication, 50(3), 335-343.
Bottitta, J., Idoura, A. P., & Pappas, L. (2003, August). Moving to single sourcing: Managing the effects of organizational changes. Technical Communication: Journal of the Society for Technical Communication, 50(3), 355-369.
Eble, M.F. (2003, August). Content vs. product: The effects of single sourcing on the teaching of technical communications. Technical Communication: Journal of the Society for Technical Communication, 50(3), 344-349.
Kramer, R. (2003, August). Single source in practice: IBM’s SGML Toolset and the writer as technologist, problem solver, and editor. Technical Communication: Journal of the Society for Technical Communication, 50(3), 328-334.
Rockley, A. (February 3, 2003). Managing
Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy [White Paper]. Retrieved
February 24, 2003 from, http://www.rockley.com/articles/The%20Rockley%20Group%20-%20ECM%20UCS%20Whitepaper.pdf
Rockley, A. (2003, August). Single sourcing: It’s about people, not just technology. Technical Communication: Journal of the Society for Technical Communication, 50(3), 350-354.
Rockley, A. (2001, January). The impact of single sourcing and technology. Technical Communication: Journal of the Society for Technical Communication, 48(2), 189-193.
Williams, J. D. (2003, August). The implications of single sourcing for technical communicators. Technical Communication: Journal of the Society for Technical Communication, 50(3), 321-327.
|
Frequency |
Percentage |
Yes |
2 |
10% |
No |
17 |
85% |
No Answer |
1 |
5% |
Total |
20 |
100% |
|
Frequency |
Percentage |
Director |
1 |
5 |
Technical Publications Manager Documentation Manager Group Manager |
3 |
15% |
Senior Technical Writer Senior Author Senior Communicator Senior Scientist Senior Information Developer |
8 |
40% |
Technical Writer Technical Communicator Technical Author & Software Engineer Learning Products Engineer |
8 |
40% |
Total |
20 |
100% |
This appendix is a copy of the introductory email for the survey and was sent to both, the Framers listserv and the TechWrl listserv.
-----Original Message-----
From: Martinek, Carla M [mailto:CMartinek@zebra.com]
Sent: Wednesday, March 03, 2004 3:21 PM
To: framers@FrameUsers.com
Subject: OT: Single Sourcing Survey
I'm posting this for a co-worker who is in grad school.
-Carla Martinek
cmartinek@zebra.com
*********************************
Hello, my name is Beth Harker, and I've created a survey as part of a
graduate class research project. I am researching the effects of single
sourcing within Technical Publication groups.
To participate in the survey, please click on the link below. When you
submit the survey, your answers will be sent directly to my email account.
Surveys must be received prior to Friday, 5 March 2004, 6 PM CST to be
included in the project results.
Thank you in advance for your assistance in this project.
http://www.oocities.org/harker_gradschool/index.html
Beth Harker
beth08h@aol.com
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This is the raw data from the survey broken down by interview number. The interview numbers were assigned based on ascending order of the date and timestamp and the email. (For example, interview number one was from the first respondent and arrived first.)
Interview Numbers |
Begun Single Sourcing |
Percent |
Single Sourcing Solutions |
Writing Roles |
Organization Changes |
1 |
Yes |
100% |
Extensive use of FrameMaker text insets and conditional
text to create 13 manuals, 10 online help systems, and various other
documents |
No |
Not really. Although when we had layoffs, one writer's job
was not refilled. Single sourcing has made us more efficient |
2 |
Yes |
100% |
FrameMaker, FrameDoc, WWP Professional, XSL |
yes, assigned support and planner roles |
used a consultant |
3 |
No |
0% |
|
|
|
4 |
Yes |
100% |
FrameMaker with WebWorks Publisher |
Not officially, execpt the change below. But unofficially
you do become more of an "imformation organiser" rather than just
purely a writer. |
Hiring a tranalsation coordinator. |
5 |
Yes |
80% |
Authorit |
No |
No |
Interview Numbers |
Begun Single Sourcing |
Percent |
Single Sourcing Solutions |
Writing Roles |
Organization Changes |
6 |
Yes |
85% |
FrameMaker plus Web Works Publisher |
|
No organizational changes *because* of single sourcing,
but, due to lay offs, we have gone from 4 to 2 writers and are (barely)
keeping up. We couldn't have kept us without our single sourcing solution. |
7 |
Yes |
20% |
content management + FrameMaker |
They were reorganizede before we considered single
sourcing. We kept authors decentralized, but put one person in charge of
corporate documentation from the executive level. |
|
8 |
Yes |
100% |
unstructured FrameMaker, mif2go, Acrobat 6.0 Professional |
No, they started out being designed for the single-source
workflow (we're a new company and we didn't "convert" to
single-source, we built it in from the beginning) |
no |
9 |
Yes |
100% |
RoboHelp |
No |
No |
10 |
Yes |
100% |
LaTeX + Perforce (with a view to moving to DocBook
XML + Perforce) |
No |
No |
11 |
Yes |
0% |
|
|
|
Interview Numbers |
Begun Single Sourcing |
Percent |
Single Sourcing Solutions |
Writing Roles |
Organization Changes |
12 |
Yes |
100% |
FrameMaker |
no |
no |
13 |
Yes |
100% |
We use FrameMaker, WebWorks, and Sourcerer, which is a
custom plugin that we developed and now market (www.advantica.biz/sourcerer). |
We only have a few writers, so for the most part no.
However, we used to work with one writer per major product, and when we
combined two of those products together via single-sourcing, the two writers
now work togther to document both products at the same time. We split the
workload based on application considerations -- one person does all the GUI,
reporting, charting, etc. features, while the other does the more technical
aspects of the two applications. |
Nope. |
14 |
Yes |
10% |
Tinderbox/XML |
No |
No |
15 |
Yes |
40% |
Mostly FrameMaker with text inserts for standard text, and
heavy use of variables and conditionals. |
Nope. This was initiated bottom-up by two writers
sick of maintaining copy-and-pasted (then edited) boilerplate. |
Not of the organization, but of the way content is kept
and tracked. We have started documenting our processes for assembling
the finished product so that other writers can share the work. |
16 |
Yes |
60% |
Between for-print FrameMaker files and HTML-based online
help, using ForeHelp (which is sadly no longer available). Single sourcing
can go either way. Also single-sourcing between FrameMaker and
PowerPoint, for training materials. |
No, there are only 5 writers, and we do everything -- no
division of labour |
Yes, the writing department is also the source of customer
training (non-existant before). |
Interview Numbers |
Begun Single Sourcing |
Percent |
Single Sourcing Solutions |
Writing Roles |
Organization Changes |
17 |
Yes |
50% |
FrameMaker and WebWorks Publisher 2003 |
No |
No |
18 |
Yes |
1% |
Still looking into it. Might use RoboHelp. |
No |
We experienced changes within our developer department which
has forced us to finally go to single sourcing. The Tech Writers were
already set up that way because we've been desiring the change. |
19 |
Yes |
100% |
Adobe FrameMaker (primary authoring environment), with
Adobe Acrobat (for PDF output), Macromedia RoboHelp for FrameMaker (for
WebHelp and FlashHelp output), and Mif2Go (for Microsoft Word output, as
necessary). |
No. Single-sourcing was a goal from the initial formation
of the technical writing function within the company. Therefore, single-sourcing
experience and tool skills were required of new hires. |
No. |
Interview Numbers |
Begun Single Sourcing |
Percent |
Single Sourcing Solutions |
Writing Roles |
Organization Changes |
20 |
Yes |
35% |
FrameMaker source documents and WebWorks Professional 2003
to provide online help |
No. I am the lone writer on this project. They would not
go for a title upgrade of Inforamation Developer GODDESS so I'm still just
"techincal writer." |
Organization changes caused the push for single sourcing.
I am assigned to the training team and we have decreased the number of
trainers who used to assist in maintaining the training guides. Now the
training materials, release notes and online help are all my responsibility
and I need a way to eliminate duplication of tasks and streamline my update
process. Single Sourcing is the solution and savior to my sanity. |
21 |
Yes |
70% |
FrameMaker/conditional tags to produce two (printed) deliverables,
WebWorks Professional to produce a third (online) from the same master
document |
One person inofficially became the template owner
(previously a free-for-all), but no official changes were made. |
Nothing official. Other groups within our company were
interested and requested our templates, they are now also single-sourcing. We
expect more far-reaching changes once we move to using Structured FrameMaker
and XML (in ca. 6 months). |
22 |
Yes |
100% |
FrameMaker & WebWorks |
No |
No |
Interview Numbers |
New Role Definitions |
Job Title |
How Long Technical Communicator |
Other Comments |
1 |
|
Technical Publications Manager |
10 years |
|
2 |
|
Group Manager |
25 years |
Inadequate information modeling and requirements gathering
have contributed to a poor implementation and severe productivity obstacles
without achieving business goals for this program. |
3 |
|
Senior Online Help Author |
27 years |
Not all companies will single-source. It depends on the
amount of reuse the material gets, the resources available, and the number of
customers. |
4 |
Our FrameMaker files became so complicated with conditional
text (i.e. 8 different deliverables from the same source), that translations
suffered and were too expensive. This resulted in the a new role for a
translations coordinator, who helped better understand how translations fit
into the single-sourcing process. |
Senior Technical Author |
4 years |
I am sceptical whether single sourcing is worth it. I
think the complexity it brings (such as the departmental changes that are
part of this survey) outweigh any benefit (i.e. write once, output many
times) IMHO. |
5 |
|
Technical writer |
6 months |
|
Interview Numbers |
New Role Definitions |
Job Title |
How Long Technical Communicator |
Other Comments |
6 |
|
Senior Technical Writer |
10 years |
We plan to improve our single sourcing solution. Currently
we single source hardcopy and online help. After a release is, uh, released,
we copy the source files to a new directory where changes for the next
release are done. However, we have to maintain 4 releases of each product, so
changes can be required in up to 4 versions of the same document. Our next
step is to get all releases of a single product into a single source so each
change needs to be made only once. We may be going to an XML solution along
with a content management product. I'm looking into FrameMaker and Arbortext
Epic but leaning towards FrameMaker because we are familiar with it and can
create our online help easily with Web Works Publisher. I haven't determined
which content management system we will use. |
7 |
|
Director of Business Documentation |
|
|
8 |
|
Senior Technical Writer |
17 years |
Do more with fewer resources: single source! |
9 |
|
Technical Communicator |
2 years |
|
10 |
|
Technical Author and Software Engineer |
9 years |
|
11 |
|
|
|
|
Interview Numbers |
New Role Definitions |
Job Title |
How Long Technical Communicator |
Other Comments |
12 |
|
Documentation Manager |
8 years |
|
13 |
N/A |
Senior Technical Communicator |
about 10 years |
|
14 |
|
Senior Scientist |
37 yrs |
|
15 |
|
Senior Technical Writer |
9 years |
The products and development process here do not loan
themselves to full single-sourcing. Even with the modular interfaces of the software,
there is only about 70% reuse possible because our engineering team tends to
solve problems differently each time. |
16 |
Tech writer on the project is also responsible for providing
training materials and delivering training when requested by the customer. |
Senior Information Developer |
7 years |
While we value being able to provide our customers with
single-sourced documents, we truly find a difference in writing style, based
on the tool used to do the writing. We now strongly believe that the best
online help (readability, organization, hypertext, page design) comes only
when you work in a tool specifically designed for online publishing. |
Interview Numbers |
New Role Definitions |
Job Title |
How Long Technical Communicator |
Other Comments |
17 |
N/A |
Technical Writer |
12 years or so |
Single sourcing is running into a brick wall here because of
management perceptions; they want to see technical writers typing and success
is measured in terms of overtime and not projects completed more quickly (60
hours more quickly than previously) and more accurately. If an organization
is not itself organized, it will not appreciate nor support single sourcing.
Any change in workflow, including single sourcing needs buy in. Sigh. |
18 |
By developer knowledge and similar activities. We
use to do it based on one state - and within that state, everyone knew a
little about a lot. Now people know alot about a little - much more cohesive. |
Technical Writer |
5 Years |
Thank you for asking. |
19 |
n/a |
Senior Technical Writer |
Five years. |
|
Interview Numbers |
New Role Definitions |
Job Title |
How Long Technical Communicator |
Other Comments |
20 |
|
Technical Writer - not Information Developer Goddess -
sadly |
16 years |
Single sourcing requires tremendous upfront planning and
outlining to the minute detail as well as a complete audience analysis. Don't
be tempted to skip either one - you will pay for it in the end by having to
re-architect your design to fit your audience. |
21 |
NewRoleDefinitions = One person will have to spend more
time as EDD/DTD owner, bug-tracker. We do not neccessarily expect these
changes to be formalized in any way. |
Learning Products Engineer |
4 years |
We translate to 20 languages. Training the translators in
the new processes was a significant organisational effort. We saved a lot of
money by single-sourcing and we gave presentations on this to make sure
everyone know about it. We got a lot of visibility and recognition for our
efforts (verbal only! not in the form of a pay rise unfortunately). |
22 |
N/A |
Technical Writer |
seven years |
|