Periodically, the Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM) offers a survey highlighting research in an area of current interest in information development.

Both members and non-members may participate in the CIDM Survey and receive results and analyses. Survey results and analyses are normally posted in issues of the Best Practices newsletter.

Authoring Tools

The actions of the information-development departments surveyed closely parallel the technology customers described in Geoffrey Moore's Technology Adoption Life Cycle in his book, Crossing the Chasm.

Customer Satisfaction Surveys

Participants using electronic (email), Web-based, or a combined interview/survey mode of delivery for customer satisfaction surveys find that response rates increase. Users are more likely to receive and respond to surveys delivered directly and immediately to their desktop through electronic means or if asked to directly by an interviewer.

Hiring Patterns

Despite the current economic climate, the vast majority of companies do not expect loss of staff in 2001. Writers and programmers will continue to be hired. The need for additional staff is determined most often by detailed project estimates and requests from product development.

Telecommuting Survey

Single Sourcing

Overwhelmingly, writers author documents in the same way they always have done: one writer writes the deliverable independent of other writers in the department. There are very few departments collaborating on deliverables. Only 11% report collaborating on a book, and 8% report collaborating on an online help system.

Estimating and Tracking

Determining the scope or size of a documentation project is not the same as estimating resources. It is likely that different writing groups may make different estimates for the same scope project because they may have different standards, different work schedules, or different experience levels. The scope is intrinsic to the documentation project and is independent of resource estimates.

The best practice is to determine scope independent of the architecture of the forthcoming documentation. The number of pages, number of topics, number of graphics, and so on, are not good measures of scope since they imply specific documentation structures. It is better to use number of tasks, number of screens, number of features, number of hardware modules, or other software or hardware features rather than documentation-oriented metrics.