The Hindu Business Line : Demand for technical writers growing

"Can engineers write?" Ms Usha Mohan, Managing Director of Triumph India Software Services, a major technical communication services company, faces this question very often from her clients. And her answer to this is in numbers, "About 70 per cent of my technical writers are engineers."

Technical writing came into its own in early 2000, when IT companies realised that documentation was as critical as design, development, coding and testing of software.

"But now there is a shortage of manpower as skills needed for the job are both technical and creative," says Ms Mohan, whose recruitment process starts at engineering college campuses.

Software companies now prefer to outsource documentation services. In fact, out of the 125 people Triumph employs, about 60 of them are working on an ODC (offshore documentation centre) for Motorola, she says.

Currently, the technical communication industry has 10 leading players in the country and employs around 3,000 technical writers. But the industry requirement is three times more, says Ms Usha.

Domain skills

Another trend the industry is witnessing is domain specialisation. Finance, telecom, banking, consumer electronics are some subject matter skills that technical writers need to have, she says.

Triumph has worked with about 70 software companies including MindTree, Ittiam Technologies, Satyam Computers and Sasken Technologies. "Earlier, technical writing was assigned to the marketing team. But with the outsourcing industry taking over, documentation services became a non-core activity for IT companies," she says.

Triumph, which is expecting to post revenues of around $1 million this year ('06-07), is also putting in place processes to attain quality certifications by the end of the year.

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