Manuals vital to systems success

Phil Cohen, director of HCi Professional Services, Sydney, is in Auckland as a member of the Technical Communicators Association of New Zealand. Picture / Greg Bowker

Technical writing isn't unlike running the Roman Empire, Phil Cohen says. It's all about understanding what makes people tick.

"The Romans controlled what for them was the whole world ... [but] they didn't have ballpoint pens. They had their act together, they thought about how people interacted and how they worked together. That's what did it for them," he said. "[It's] about making the technology fit the people rather than making the people fit the technology."

Whether printed or online, Cohen says the user manuals produced by technical writers can be the difference between success and failure of a system implementation. Ignoring them can cost a company millions of dollars.

"Just imagine you've spent $20 million on an [enterprise resource planning] system but there's nothing to describe how to use it," Cohen said.

"What do you think your return on investment is going to be? Zero."

A 2004 report by US project analysis specialist Standish Group says 71 per cent of all IT projects do not fully succeed. The Technical Communicators Association of New Zealand says this is because of poor training, understanding and acceptance by users.

Cohen says documentation and training are thus critical drivers of user acceptance.

As part of the association's annual conference, to be held in Christchurch on September 8 to 9, Cohen will attend an international meeting on standards.

The meeting will aim to improve effective use of documentation by involving managers, buyers and auditors in the process.

The international standard, established in 1999, sets out a process for selecting the information needed in technical documents to ensure success with end users.

"I think there's a growing awareness that the lack of appreciation of what the users do from day to day has been a major contributing factor to that [failure]," he said. "The temptation when you are developing software is to say, well the software does stuff, we have to write that down and it's all in the document, [so] if the users can't find it then they're stupid."

Cohen also cites project overspend as a common cause of cutbacks in documentation and training.

He estimates the documentation required for a successful implementation can account for 10 per cent of a project's budget.

Ironically, the dot-com crash and the subsequent fall in IT spending focused attention away from technology and on to people, he says.

"I think there's increased cynicism now about what IT can deliver and increased awareness that it's the human end of it, the business process end, that's actually more important than just the data model."

Born in Scotland, Cohen worked as a chemical engineer in England before moving to Australia in the late 1970s.

After writing for an electronics magazine he migrated to technical writing and subsequently founded HCi in 1981 - a recruitment company for technical writers.

With little tertiary education available for budding technical writers, the aptitude of Cohen's recruits is as important as their experience.

Phil Cohen

Favourite gadget: Palm Pilot.

Next big thing in tech: Virtual reality helmet, giving someone in Auckland a real-time view of a Malibu beach.

Alternative career: "I'd be doing this for a hobby if I wasn't doing it for a living."

Spare time: Reads science fiction.

Favourite sci-fi movie: Alien.