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Organizational Implications of the Future Development of Technical Communication: Fostering Communities of Practice in the Workplace

Posted on: Friday, 5 August 2005, 09:00 CDT

SUMMRY

* Describes evolving methods and best practices that can be applied in the workplace to support effective communities of practice

* Provides a case study of ways an organization can support skill- based and multidisciplinary goal-based communities of practice

INTRODUCTION

Technical communication is a diverse and changing profession. Today's technical communication practitioners bring a variety of skills, training, and core competencies to their jobs. For example, technical communicators today may have formal training and experience in one or more areas of specialization, including writing, editing, visual design, user-interface design, usability testing, and programming. Technical communicators typically work as members of multidisciplinary teams with organizational goals and business objectives that can be achieved only by a team of specialists. The tools and technologies that technical communicators use are constantly evolving. In this complex and dynamic environment, "community" is emerging as a critical element both in supporting individual professional development and in defining the future of the profession itself.

Researchers such as Lave and Wenger (1991) have identified the concept of "community of practice," a community created over time through the interactions required in the "sustained pursuit of a shared enterprise" (Wenger 1998, p. 35). The pursuit of common goals results in collective learning that is reflected in shared practices. Effective communities of practice are often a positive factor in a commercial organization's success, for example decreasing learning curves, helping identify subject-matter experts, enabling employees to understand the context in which they perform tasks, and making the transfer of knowledge easier (Lesser and Storck 2001). Communities sometimes form in support of practitioners of a specialized skill or sometimes in support of common business goals that span areas of specialization.

As the profession of technical communication evolves, practitioners are developing formal and informal organizational structures that support such collaborative communities. These organizational structures are emerging within commercial companies and professional societies such as STC. This article describes evolving methods and best practices that technical communicators can apply in the workplace to create an environment that supports effective communities of practice. We identify specific techniques and best practices, including methods of assessing the effectiveness and business impact of communities in the workplace, and interventions for improvement. We also reference a specific technical communication organization, Data Management (DM) User Technology at IBM Corporation, as a case study of ways to implement an organizational infrastructure that supports both skill-based communities of practice and multidisciplinary goal-based communities.

Our perspective is not that of observers of naturally emerging communities of practice, but of experimenters and implementers within a commercial organization. We are actively trying to implement an organizational infrastructure and work environment that fosters and supports both skill-based communities of practice and multidisciplinary goal-based communities. For the purposes of this article, we intentionally contrast managed workgroups and project teams (such as a product development team) with less formal, more personalized, and more dynamic communities of practice.

COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PROFESSION

Community of practice is a relatively new term for a very old idea. The term has emerged in the past 15 years to describe the concept of less formal networks of people collaborating on common needs, tasks, or practices. The common elements of a viable community of practice include:

* People with a shared interest or problem

* A means of communication

* Conventions for collaboration and for capturing and transferring tacit knowledge and experience (Lave and Wenger 1991)

Communities of practice are emerging as the collaborative and creative space where technical communicators can move the profession forward in new directions, with new technologies and skills, while supporting the core added value of technical communication: providing the information people need, when they need it, in a quality and usable manner. Understanding how communities of practice work, what makes them effective, and how to keep them healthy and dynamic will be the key to success in the future of our profession.

Thea Teich, a past president of STC, stated in a guest editorial in Intercom that "STC is an organization of the communities of practice that comprise technical communication" (2004, p. 2). STC's immediate past president, Andrea Ames, further discusses STC's multidisciplinary nature when she asks,

Can one society meet the needs and provide significant value across disciplines as diverse as usability and editing and across diverse skill sets and industries? Yes, we can, because STC's strength is in our communities . . . the Society provides infrastructure, mentoring, financial and administrative support, and policies and processes for those communities to form and flourish. (2004, p. 2)

While the members of a multidisciplinary professional organization have common goals (such as professional development and networking), they also have unique and specialized needs for education, communication, and shared practices based on their specific skills.

This same trend is also currently reflected in the strategic direction of STC itself. STC's transformation initiative focuses on building and supporting a wide range of communities of practice, for example through the formation of Special Interest Groups, as well as geographic communities such as local chapters. In the vision statement for STC's transformation, members of the STC board of directors predict that "STC will be a vital, growing, and global 'community of communities' involved with the communication of technical information and the use of technology to communicate information" and that the organization will "establish a broad umbrella that embraces new disciplines, groups, or organizations" (Teich, Ames, and Laurent 2004).

A recent survey of leaders in the technical communication field also confirms that "Going forward, technical communication will have a broader definition, which means our core skill, writing, will take on more flavors than it does today." In another response to this same survey, another leader elaborates that "Document design, information design, user experience design, usability, information architecture with content management, special needs, international focus, teaching, and many other aspects of communication all fit within STC" (Giammona 2004, p. 361).

In STC, these specialized skill communities are supported through an infrastructure of Special Interest Groups and online networking forums. In industry, technical communicators will need to work within organizational structures to develop effective mechanisms to support specialized communities of practice. The remainder of this article looks beyond our professional society to the implications that this change to the profession will have on the workplace.

COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE IN THE WORKPLACE

Working beneath the common umbrella of an overarching organizational structure and mission, technical communicators represent many distinct skill groups. To be successful, practitioners in each skill area must demonstrate the unique value they add to the overall mission, and at the same time find ways to further develop and hone their specialized skills.

Organizational structures can place professionals with similar skills in relative isolation. Even in a large, established technical communication organization such as IBM's DM User Technology, the focus of this case study, departments are often organized by business goal and aligned with a specific product set. So each department might have an editor, writers, visual designer, user interface designers, and Webmaster for a given product. In this model, editors in different departments, supporting different products, need a forum for coordinating and standardizing editorial guidelines, and for sharing best practices for technical editing. In the same way, the visual designers need a vehicle to communicate and share with other visual designers, Web masters with other Web masters, and so on. In decentralized situations where technical communicators are spread across multiple organizations within a large company, the need for editors to network with their peers across the company is even greater.

TABLE 1: TYPES OF COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE WITHIN DM USER TECHNOLOGY

The mechanisms described here for nurturing and sustaining such communities of practice could be sponsored at a corporate level to bring together the discipline-specific communities from across separate organizational reporting structures. Alternatively, these communities could be formed informally by practitioners from across the company through mechanisms such as informal networking, e-mail communication,and use of collaborative work spaces such as electronic team rooms. STC's Special Interest Groups serve similar functions for individual contributors who do not have access to these communities in their own companies. Technical communicators are often involved in other specialized communities that form around the emergence or evolution of new technologies and tools.

At IBM, a centralized technical communication organization called Data Management (DM) User Technology illustrates some of the emerging trends for communities of practice in this profession. The DM User Technology organization consists of people trained in technical communication, human factors, human-computer interaction, industrial design, graphic design, and computer science, all assigned to various project teams that document and design database software.

A fundamental element in creating a dynamic and collaborative culture within DM User Technology has been the recognition and support of communities of practice within the organization. Table 1 lists some examples of the types of communities that members of DM User Technology participate in. For the purposes of this article, we do not include traditional product development teams with well- established project management or project-managed workgroups with assigned deliverables.

This specific organization and many of its communities are referenced throughout the article as a case study of communities of practice in the workplace.

MECHANISMS TO NURTURE COMMUNITIES IN THE WORKPLACE

Informal communities of practice can emerge and exist without organizational sponsorship or intervention. The emergence of a community can be as simple as creating a listserv or mail list of people who are interested in a common problem, or when a group of colleagues regularly meet for lunch to discuss common problems or new opportunities.

DM User Technology has focused on several organizational mechanisms with the goal of nurturing and supporting communities of practice:

* Support for skill-based councils

* Infrastructure for collaborative communication

* Encouragement of mentoring

* Consideration of physical proximity

Each of these is described in the following sections. Survey and assessment data is included to indicate the opinions and perceptions of the members of the DM User Technology organization.

Support for skill-based councils

A simple mechanism to support communities is the concept of a cross-department council, with practitioners from various groups coming together for a specific work-based goal. One such council is the Editing Council, bringing together editors from across the company to ensure a common, consistent style guide and a standard set of formatting guidelines for all company publications and online help. Skill-based councils also make sense for user-interface designers at software companies, who can collaborate in a network, perhaps formalized as a council, to agree on common user-interface design standards, common icons, and a common look-and-feel for the company's software products. If a company employs multiple visual designers, practitioners of this discipline can benefit from agreement on common product packaging, common company branding, cover designs, and so on. In highly decentralized companies, the core skill of technical communication may require the formal infrastructure that is afforded by a Writing Council, to share terminology, style guidelines, and so on across this community.

At IBM, each major skill group has a cross-department council in our Data Management User Technology (UT) organization-the UT Editing Council, UT Visual Design Council, and so on. Once or twice a month, members from across the organization who identify themselves as one of the various skill disciplines (editing, or graphic design, or Web content developers) meet with their peers to discuss processes, common practices, and guidelines. In essence, the editors and other skill groups within DM User Technology have formed skills-based communities of practice. The council meetings provide a formal way of encouraging and supporting frequent and direct collaboration on the most critical issues for their community.

Members of these skills-based communities often share examples of their work, demonstrate new work techniques, share best practices, or ask questions of each other to solve common problems. Their time and effort with the council are not directly related to their specific productrelated assignments and are not under the direct purview of their line manager, yet active participation is expected and is rarely an issue.

Members participate because they learn from each other and return to their assignments more confident and better prepared. They resolve questions, find solutions to common problems, and come up with proposals that help all of them be more effective in their work.

In a recent survey within DM User Technology, 100% of the survey respondents cited participation in one or more skills-based councils.

Infrastructure for collaborative communication

In addition to formal structures such as councils, informal learning and sharing of knowledge is critical to the success of skills-based communities, and to the transfer of knowledge over time within communities as individuals come and go. With new tools and technologies rapidly changing the requirements for our profession, individuals must continually learn new skills and tools. For example, tagging languages and tools evolved from HTML editors (used for writing for the Web) to XML editors (used for architecting topic- based information). The next step might be writing customized dynamic information objects. Often these skills are not taught in formal classes because they are evolving. Members of the communities teach themselves and in fact develop the expertise together on the job through iterative communication and exploration. Such communities will be critical to our individual and collective success.

At IBM, in addition to gathering for council meetings, the members of various skill communities in DM User Technology engage in constant ongoing communication specifically geared to their skill discipline. As an example, the Editing Council has both an intranet Web site (for communicating outward to the organization about standards and guidelines and tips for good writing) and a Lotus Notes discussion database that functions as a listserv or online bulletin board (for FAQs shared among themselves, announcements of news or best practices, and so on). As another example, the Human Factors engineers share both an intranet Web site and a Lotus Notes discussion database for communication. Much of the communication could be considered knowledge transfer-capturing best practices, publishing tips and techniques, documenting solutions to common problems, and so on.

Furthermore, the organization-wide Lotus Notes database allows employees to "View" or sort the postings by discipline-View by Visual Design, View by Human Factors, and so on. This communication infrastructure, which is geared to skill communities, is explicitly supported by the company and by the organization, and it allows each discipline to share knowledge with others in their skill group even though the organizational reporting structure (by departments) does not link them together formally.

IBM supports informal networking by providing resources and tools to allow employees to form interest groups and to set up electronic forums for the discussion of ideas or sharing of knowledge connected to a business need. This kind of informal learning and sharing of knowledge is critical to the success of the communities, and to the transfer of knowledge over time within communities as individuals come and go. (This knowledge then becomes available across communities, as well, because the larger multidisciplinary organization has access to these same communication vehicles. Often, best practices can be applied more generally beyond the specific skill group that may have developed a given practice.)

The DM User Technology organization encourages the skill groups to share information that is useful to the broader organization through "professional vitality" sessions, department meetings, and monthly mixers. Less formal meetings and interaction are encouraged and sponsored so that groups have a chance to informally talk about what they're doing and working on, and to establish social bonds that promote greater trust, collaboration, and sharing.

Encouragement of mentoring

Mentoring has been a key focus area for DM User Technology as a means of supporting skill development within established skill communities. Across IBM, moreexperienced practitioners are encouraged to mentor others outside their departments (for example, someone of the same skill discipline in another department), and to share best practices and process knowledge outside the context of a specific assignment. Newer employees are encouraged to ask for a mentor from within their own department and discipline. Within DM User Technology, we have designated specially-trained mentors called "guides" for new hires to help them get up to speed.

Such mentoring may be either formal or informal. Communities recognize the experts within their group, and they depend on these experts to teach others. Often more formal one-on-one mentoring relationships exist, initiated by either the less-experienced practitioner or the master practitioner who wants to help develop the skills of newer employees. Mentoring is an established concept within professional societies such as STC, as well. Often less- experienced professionals at smaller companies will seek out known experts in their discipline at STC to help further develop their skill level. To succeed, we will need to offer our own time to mentor others in our profession as our own skills deepen, and we will need to seek out more-experienced practitioners as we develop new indiv\idual areas of expertise.

One of the overlooked contributions of mentors is their ability to show new employees how to identify and participate in the communities of practice that have been helpful to the mentor. Effective mentors know how to get questions answered, whom to consult for certain types of issues and problems, and how to communicate within formal and informal communities.

We consider participation in these programs to be vital, and we periodically measure participation and satisfaction. The emergence of a separate program designed to better support new employees came after discussing the initial orientation experience with them and recognizing that mentoring needs change dramatically over time. Mentors get different training and information now based on the career stage of the employees they work with.

Consideration of physical proximity

Another aspect that can reinforce or undermine a sense of community is physical proximity.

Ideally, when given a choice, practitioners should strive to maximize proximity -within skill groups -while balancing this with the many benefits of being close to multidisciplinary team members who are assigned to the same project. So, for example, where multiple technical writers are assigned to Project A, the ideal situation is for the writers to sit next to each other on the same floor as the software developers for Project A. The power of physical proximity should not be underestimated. Communication is directly affected by physical proximity and drops off exponentially with distance-even in these times of e-mail and online chat. A rule of thumb is to favor the weaker communication chain. For example, if a group of writers tends to communicate well and regularly with each other even though they are assigned to various projects, then locating individual writers as closely as possible to the project engineers would emphasize the project-specific communication. The communication among writers will probably continue to occur because it is a stronger and more natural link. (The opposite may be true at some companies, favoring co-location of the writers over location near project teams.)

In the DM User Technology organization, we try to maximize proximity within skill groups while balancing it with the many benefits of being close to multidisciplinary team members assigned to the same project. When achieving both objectives (proximity to both skill-based and project-based communities) is impossible, the decision is made, with the explicit awareness of trade-offs, by favoring one community over another. The visual designers in our organization made clear that they feel physical proximity of designers is key to their relationship, citing the need for frequent "over the shoulder" critiques of each other's work. They are also aware, however, that they need to work harder now to stay in touch with their project teams.

Similarly, the human factors engineers also sit together in one area of the building to ensure consistency of design and methodologies across projects, based on sharing of skill-based expertise and practices. They, too, must consciously work on maintaining active communication with their project peers. As a contrary example, the technical editors tend to sit near the technical writing team members for the project they are assigned to, not with other editors. The editors must compensate by remaining tightly networked with other editors who are not located in the same hallway.

FOCUSING ON BUSINESS GOALS

The preceding section describes ways to foster an organizational infrastructure that allows employees to identify with and communicate with colleagues with similar skills. However, as we move in the direction of specialized skills, we recognize the importance of directing these specialized skills toward common business goals and of applying these skills in the context of specific project- based goals.

While specialized skills are required to be successful in individual tasks, overall achievement in industry is generally gauged by success against product targets and goals. Did the division meet the ship date? Did the product meet its quality goals? Highly centralized technical communication organizations that lose sight of the overarching project goals often do not survive in the company structure. The goal of the company is generally not excellent technical documentation; it is excellent products with accompanying excellent documentation. Focusing on the discipline at the expense of furthering project goals is detrimental to company success, and this focus has been the demise of more than one centralized technical communication organization. As stated earlier, the goal is a balance. Decentralized organizations will have highly project-oriented teams, but they will need to focus on building skill communities beyond project boundaries.

Organizational leaders, whether practitioners or managers, can use a number of mechanisms to ensure that their specialized skills remain integrated into a common process with common goals:

* Formal organizational structure

* Multidisciplinary teams

* Informal education

Formal organizational structure

Most companies clearly define and reinforce their project goals using formal organizational structures, such as departments and divisions with specific business objectives. These organizational structures are often supported by mechanisms that reinforce the project-aligned goals, such as weekly team meetings, weekly project status meetings, and reviews of specs and design documents for the product. To the extent that technical communicators are assigned to specific projects, we usually participate in these project-based activities and are therefore probably aligned with goals such as deadlines and project reporting. In most cases, technical communicators will also have formal performance objectives based on product goals, such as shipping specific releases or meeting particular project deadlines. As practitioners, we must constantly work to integrate our specialized technical communication skills into the overall project infrastructure, leveraging participation in such mechanisms as project status meetings, technical reviews, and so on. These formal structures exist in nearly every company; technical communicators must take advantage of them and insert themselves into these processes to ensure alignment with overall company goals.

The DM User Technology organization is formally structured into departments, each with a manager, and each aligned by projects for specific products in the Data Management division. This formal alignment by product determines the key schedules and goals across disciplines. Individual editors, visual designers, packaging experts, human factors engineers, and so on, are assigned to specific projects and must cooperate across disciplines to achieve the product goals.

Along with this formal structure come a number of mechanisms that reinforce the project-aligned goals, such as weekly team meetings, weekly project status meetings, and reviews of specs and design documents for the product.

Formal performance objectives are based on product goals. While specialized skills are required to be successful in individual tasks, overall achievement by an individual or department is gauged by success with respect to product targets and goals.

Multidisciplinary teams

Promoting a public concept of "extended teams" or multidisciplinary teams can further strengthen cooperation across disciplines toward a common project goal. Leadership across the company must recognize the extended project team, which includes those with technical communication skills. Technical communication leaders may need to spend time with project management to reinforce this concept, and to encourage the inclusion of technical communication teams in all forms of public project activity-status meetings, town halls, recognition and celebration events, and so on. Project milestones should include technical communication milestones, dependency management should include technical communication dependencies, and ship dates should include those of the information deliverables. Public reinforcement by cross- discipline management of a common set of goals across disciplines is critical to alignment by all skill groups to the overarching project objectives.

At IBM, the formalized product development process requires the fonnation of multidisciplinary teams at the beginning phases of the process, with formal representation across disciplines. These multidisciplinary teams are, in effect, project-based communities of practice, sharing knowledge and best practices, and motivating each other to excel.

The sense of project-alignment can be further strengthened by modeling the multidisciplinary concept in very public ways. For example, when a marketing or software development manager holds an organizational meeting, all the disciplines, including those that formally report to User Technology, are included. This practice reinforces the fact that many disciplines must work together to produce an end-to-end product and that software products are more than just code.

Informal education

While councils and online discussion groups provide the opportunity for skill-specific training and skill-building, practitioners also need education and training on projectspecific processes, tools, and objectives. "Transferable skills" such as project management, quality control, or meeting-facilitation skills are important to the success of people of all skill disciplines on their assigned projects. Technical skills that are relevant to various projects, such as domain knowledge, including computer science concepts or networking technology, must also be taught. Such domain knowledge is important for all disciplines, from technical writers to human factors engineers to editors to visual designers. Practitioners must develop ways to maintain current skills in th\ese areas, in addition to their discipline skills. Brown-bag education sessions, sometimes called "lunch and learns," and other informal education activities are often very effective in keeping a focus on cross-discipline business goals.

In the DM User Technology group, we offer frequent "professional vitality" sessions to raise awareness of common goals and processes. Topics such as competitive evaluation findings or strategy briefings on product direction cut across disciplines and bring teams together to focus on the larger business goals. These sessions are taught by various members of the DM User Technology organization, which also serves to introduce members of a given skill community to a broader audience. Members of the development organizations outside of DM User Technology also can and do attend and participate in such sessions.

These informal education sessions also raise awareness across groups of the value-add of the various disciplines to the overall product goals. A recent competitive evaluation of a key competitor, for example, included members with training in human factors, technical communication, visual design, and globalization.

FINDING THE BALANCE

To be successful in tomorrow's world of multidisciplinary organizations, technical communicators must constantly balance the need to nurture distinct skills with a relentless focus on the common goals to which those skills should be applied. Communities of practice can help sustain specialized skills, but they cannot do so at the expense of focus on our core value: delivering quality information.

Technical communication organizations can fall out of balance when skill communities become so absorbed in meeting the educational and communication needs of their distinct skills that they lose sight of the business goals for which those skills are required. The skill communities do not exist to exhibit perfection in their skills; they exist to contribute those skills to a specific business- related goal, such as the design, development, and shipment of Product A on schedule and on budget.

For example, one DM User Technology community expended significant effort to learn a new tool that is very popular in the industry at large outside IBM, a tool that is considered a de facto standard for that discipline in industry. However, that particular tool has limited capabilities for producing translated deliverables and has therefore not been adopted within IBM. The community had identified with their peers in industry and saw the popularity of this tool, and thus wanted to bring their own skills "up-to-date," but in the context of our global business goals, this was not an effective use of time.

Physical proximity is another issue that needs careful analysis and balance. In general, we recommend using physical proximity to reinforce the "weaker" link-generally the link between non- engineering groups and their engineering peers. Thus, to ensure that business goals are a focal point, we would generally recommend that writers, editors, designers, and other technical communicators sit as close to their software development peers as possible to reinforce this link.

The editors in DM User Technology, for example, have a strong bond even across departments, and they maintain their own communication and sharing without the benefit of physical proximity. However, as stated earlier, the visual design community felt that being located together was very important. This decision must be balanced against the need for the designers to get out of their offices and interact with the product developers, to ensure that they understand the technical and business contexts for which they are designing.

MEASURING THE EFFECTIVENESS OF COMMUNITIES OF PRACTICE

To avoid these pitfalls and ensure a successful balance, leaders must find ways to monitor and measure their communities' success. For example, the following methods can be useful ways to assess the effectiveness and member satisfaction with organizational efforts to support and promote greater collaboration within the organization and to nurture useful communities of practice:

* Reviews and interviews

* Formal review and evaluation of the usefulness and impact of individual participation

* Informal interviews and roundtables between the organizational manager and individuals and groups

* Surveys

* E-collaboration analysis: periodic review and analysis of forums, team rooms, and databases where knowledge is captured and accessed

Each of these measurement methods is discussed below in the context of their use within DM User Technology, as an example of implementation in the workplace. These assessment methods are informal and designed to support organizational management in maintaining the health of the organization. They are provided here as examples of our approach rather than as formal research tools.

Reviews and interviews

Performance reviews are part of the culture and process of the IBM Corporation. As part of this process, DM User Technology management communicates a consistent message of the value and necessity of ongoing skill development, collaboration, and participation in activities that improve the ability of individuals and teams to exceed their business commitments. Employees are evaluated not only on their contribution to delivering a product, but also in their efforts to improve process and work effectively in teams.

Figure 1. DM user technology survey respondents by job responsibility

Less formal than reviews, periodic interviews with the organizational manager on an individual "skip-level" basis and meetings with various groups and councils help the organizational manager to assess the health and effectiveness of these efforts on a regular basis and to make adjustments as needed.

Surveys

Assessing the general health of collaboration within your organizational communities is an important part of supporting and improving such collaboration. Anonymous surveys of the DM User Technology organization were conducted to assess the perceptions of and satisfaction with various collaboration, community, and skill- development efforts. Figure 1 shows the skill areas of those who responded to the survey. Approximately one third of the organization completed this survey, and the numbers by skill are proportional to the entire group.

Figure 2 shows employee perceptions of management's recognition and value of participation in the communities of practice.

Figure 2. Survey responses on recognition of participation in communities of practice

Figure 3. Survey results on impact of collaboration activities on primary job

One broad indicator of the health of our collaborative culture is shown in the following survey item: 88% of respondents believe that their participation in workgroups, councils, peer collaboration, and professional vitality is a significant factor in developing their skills and areas of expertise. Employees are adept at recognizing "busy work" or the "HR program of the month." If they do not see the impact of participating in these opportunities or don't feel that their participation is recognized, they will not spend the time.

We also asked the question from the contrary perspective to see how members feel about time spent in these activities and about whether it had a negative effect on their ability to deliver a high- quality product.

Comments for this question pointed out the challenge of finding the right balance of time-enough to have a positive overall effect without negatively affecting the employee's primary job and deliverables. Most respondents felt that they were managing this balancing act appropriately (see Figure 3).

Interpreting the data in Figure 3 is difficult without looking at the comments. In this case, we learned through the comments that employees often do not want, even in an anonymous survey, to admit to anything that negatively affects their abilities or deliverables, whether it's an organizational problem or something else. This type of question should be used cautiously.

In DM User Technology, we do not have a systematic approach to monitoring or analyzing all of the communication and knowledge- management systems that are used by our teams. However, overall activity and use is periodically assessed so that Notes databases and forums that are no longer in use can be archived and retired.

The two basic capabilities of collaborative tools that are used by our teams, groups, and communities are

* Forums, e-mail, and instant messaging for basic communication and asynchronous discussion

* Knowledge repositories, such as Internet and intranet Web sites, and Lotus Notes databases, for capturing and sharing community knowledge

In a recent survey, DM User Technology members indicated the following levels of satisfaction:

* 73% were satisfied or very satisfied with basic communication tools such as e-mail and forums.

* 70% indicated that team rooms and knowledge repositories were either useful or very useful.

While overall satisfaction with these tools is high, the write- in comments indicate that we have work to do to make them more useful and effective. When asked what they would most like to change or improve related to communication and collaboration technology, several common problems and suggestions surfaced:

Too much information, too many places to go-need a single starting point or way to search everything.

Need to use the phone or instant messaging to quickly resolve issues rather than e-mail.

Web conferencing technology is too slow and is sometimes hard to log into.

Need more powerful search, subscription, and filtering tools.

Regular review of the use and usability of communication and collaboration tools is very important to the overall health of communities of practice and to user satisfaction. The tools and technology can be excellent, but prolonged use can result in an overload of information. These are common but difficult challenges that techn\ical communicators should be aware of so that they can try to help overcome these challenges for their organizations.

A general approach that works for DM User Technology is to encourage community ownership of the tools and their use, including establishing etiquette and reminding leaders that use needs to be sufficient to justify the information technology time and costs spent. Forums and knowledge repositories that fall into disuse should be eliminated (with proper warning), merged, or replaced. Experimentation by a community should be encouraged until they find the right type of collaborative space. For some teams, a simple news group works well; for others, a sophisticated team room with a variety of tools is more effective.

INTERVENTIONS TO ENSURE SUCCESS

As a result of the indicators and measures described above, organizational leaders may need to take corrective action to strengthen specific communities, or to realign community members with overarching business goals. Some of the interventions that we have found effective are summarized in the following sections.

Strengthening communities

Using some of the measurements described above, organizational leaders may feel that a given skill group needs additional support or a strengthened sense of identity to be effective in nurturing skill growth and optimizing associated processes. This is more likely to be a weakness in highly decentralized companies where skill groups are spread across organizations. In those cases, practitioners have a strong need to feel that networking and sharing with others of the same discipline is a legitimate activity, even though these employees report to different managers and may be assigned to different projects and assignments within the company.

Leaders who enable such networking and formation of communities through the formal organizational mechanisms described above (councils, mentoring, and so on) may be doing what is required, but even this may not suffice. These leaders may also need to overtly sanction and encourage active participation in such activities. Leaders may need to sponsor public announcements of council meetings, attend occasional activities, or actively contribute to online skills-based discussions to legitimize the acceptance of those discussions and activities in the workplace.

Of course, a fine line exists between participating in these activities and monitoring them. Leaders should be careful to allow participants the ability to ask questions of each other, learn, and to grow without feeling they are being "assessed" by management in these activities. Organizational leaders may be able to encourage more active community engagement by finding key "thought leaders" among the practitioners, who can act as models of participation for others in their respective communities to emulate. A strong community leader from the practitioner population is often a key element of success in building a vibrant community of practice.

Leaders can also ensure that the necessary technology is in place to facilitate frequent communication across a given community-do employees have access to online discussion forums or chat technology? Do they have a place to store reference documents, such as best practices or common processes? Should a more radical solution-such as changing physical proximity-be considered for a community that is growing weaker?

Realigning practitioners with business goals

A natural challenge for any organization that supports communities of practice is to ensure that their activities align with the overall purpose and goals of the organization. Having communities within and around the formal structure of the business organization requires that organizational leaders consider the effectiveness and success of these communities and ensure that these communities are contributing to the broader goals. This can be a huge challenge. Measurements and organizational indicators may lead to the need to reinforce the importance of applying multidisciplinary skills to a common business goal. In our experience, this is a more frequent issue than weak alignment by discipline. However, highly decentralized companies (where technical communicators often do not report to a common organization) would likely not experience this problem, but instead they would need to focus on building skill communities.

Members of any given skill group must keep a relentless focus on the common business goals and on the best ways to apply the skills of the community. When business goals become secondary to the focus on the discipline and skills of a community, organizational leaders must take steps to reinforce the overarching business and project goals. This can be done by placing renewed focus on project- specific dates and deliverables, with interim checkpoints to ensure that progress is being made. Physical proximity can be adjusted to ensure that employees are sitting closest to those on their project teams. Another technique is to ask skill groups to use business cases to show how their requests (education, a software purchase, or attendance at a particular conference) also support project-related goals.

Another way to realign focus on business goals is through public recognition of project-based teams, recognizing the value added by each individual discipline in the context of achieving a shared, business-related goal. Project team events help to reinforce a common identity, and they might also include physical representation of this common identity through team shirts, coffee mugs or lanyards. Of course, formal organizational mechanisms described above, such as holding specific project-based meetings, tracking deliverables by project, and assessing results by project, all serve to reinforce business goals as the context for all other activity.

Figure 4. Investment in time

This discussion leads us to two imperatives. First, technical communication leaders must recognize when the balance has swung away from sufficient focus on project-based goals. As stated earlier, highly centralized technical communication organizations that lose sight of overarching project goals often do not survive in the company structure. second, technical communication employees must understand the larger company goals and the role that they and their organizations play in achieving those goals.

Investing time and resources

Organizations that want to take advantage of communities of practice should be prepared to commit appropriate group member time and resources. Participation in such communities and supporting them is no small investment. Figure 4 gives an approximate idea of how much time some of the members of DM User Technology said that they spend in these activities.

In DM User Technology, for example, 75% of the survey respondents spend more than 5 hours per month. One third of them spend 10-20 hours per month. This is a significant expenditure of time, and resources and must be managed carefully. Regular review, alignment with business goals, and inclusion in employee evaluation are some of the methods that we've described that help ensure that these resources are used effectively.

SHAPING THE FUTURE

As companies challenge technical communication organizations to take on broader, more strategic roles in defining and designing the user experience, those organizations will need to hire a more diverse set of specialized skills. Practitioners in these organizations will need to develop ways to meet their unique and specialized needs for education, communication, and shared practices, yet retain focus on a common goal: excellence in technical communication and the overall user experience for a specific commercial product.

DM User Technology provides a case study of how one organization is taking steps to foster and support the type of communities of practice that can help individuals develop skills, enable teams to collaboratively solve problems and develop best practices, and support a business organization in its quest to succeed in the marketplace. In this sense, this organization is representative of the situations in which communities of practice are shaping the future role and profession of technical communicators.

Technical communicators of the future will need to be skilled at operating in several communities of practice simultaneously. The best technical communicators will be those who can best take advantage of what communities have to offer: best practices, mentoring, networking, and skill transfer. In the future, specialists will need to find ways of developing links to communities both within and beyond their place of employment. In small companies, reaching out to communities of practice sponsored by organizations such as STC may be critical to developing a changing skill set to continue demonstrating value to employers as demands and expectations change for technical communicators.

At the same time that more specialized skills are being required, technical communicators will need to continue focusing on the core value that they add to the company, usually through contributions to the product deliverable. Specialized skills are increasingly valued in the context of how that skill contributes to the company's mission and market success. Honing skills in business awareness, interdisciplinary teamwork, and product-related domain knowledge will be critical in combination with the specialized skills of a technical communicator. Understanding larger company goals, as well as the strategic and tactical plans for their part of the company in achieving those goals, will become more important to the success of technical communicators in the workplace.

Technical communicators who can best balance these two roles of specialist and core contributor will be the most valuable in the marketplace. Learning to quickly identify existing communities of practice and tap into them will aid in quick alignment with a new emplo\yer. The ability to form and develop communities where none exist, using both internal and external resources, will be another differentiator. Leveraging communities of practice to continually evolve skill sets while remaining focused on core company values will be critical to long-term career survival.

To sustain their value, technical communicators will need to shape organizational structures that move the profession forward in new directions, with new technologies and new skills, while supporting the core value added by technical communication: providing the information customers need, when they need it, in a quality and usable manner. Accomplishing this goal requires a relentless focus on both skill-based communities and goal-based communities. Both must be nurtured, and both must grow for the technical communicators-and indeed for the company-to succeed in the future.

Manuscript received 13 December 2004; revised 15 March 2005; accepted 25 March 2005.

TRADEMARKS

IBM, Lotus, and Notes are trademarks of International Business Machines Corporation in the United States, other countries, or both.

Other company, product, or service names may be trademarks or service marks of others.

REFERENCES

Ames, Andrea. 2004. Values: STC's and yours. Intercom 51(8): 2.

Giammona, Barbara. 2004. The future of technical communication: How innovation, technology, information management, and other forces are shaping the future of the profession. Technical communication 51:349-366.

Lave, Jean, and Etienne Wenger. 1991. Situated learning: Legitimate peripheral participation. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

Lesser, E. L., and J. Storck. 2001. Communities of practice and organizational performance. IBM systems journal 40: 831-841.

Teich, Thea. 2004. Guest editorial: An STC transformation update. Intercom 51(7): 2.

_____, Andrea Ames, and Suzanna Laurent. 2004. Vision model: Where we are going, http://www.stc.org/ transformation/ article5.asp.

Wenger, Etienne. 1998. Communities of practice: Learning meaning and identity. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.

LORI FISHER works at the IBM Silicon Valley Laboratory as the program director for DM User Technology, managing an organization of information developers, human factors engineers, graphic and visual designers, and user assistance programmers working on data management software products. She teaches two of the core courses in a certificate program in advanced technical communication at University of California Santa Cruz Extension. She has served on the STC nominating committee, chaired the STC Quality SIG, held multiple elected local chapter positions, and is currently secretary of the Society. She is a fellow of STC. Contact: lorif@us.ibm.com.

LINDSAY BENNION is an information architect at the IBM Silicon Valley Laboratory. He works with software product development teams to design and improve the information and the user experience. He is a member of several IBM councils and workgroups responsible for establishing common tools, processes, and design for product information. He is completing a doctoral program in instructional systems technology at Indiana University. His areas of interest include communities of practice, collaboration, and socio-technical design. Contact: lindsayb@us.ibm.com.

Copyright Society for Technical Communication Aug 2005

Source: Technical Communication

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