A little about me 

I started studying Electronics Engineering Technology over 30 years ago and quickly realized that I was much better at organizing and disseminating information than I was at designing electric circuits, so I transferred to Technical Writing. I worked in a variety of industries writing manuals and user guides.

Fun Fact: I was the Technical Writer on the team that developed Fibre Channel, a switched–fabric networking protocol used mostly in data centres. I clearly recall thinking what the heck is a switched–fabric?

My career progressed to focus on process analysis and then business analysis. These roles share common skill sets: facilitation, influencing, and communicating. Where they differ is in the output, taking in to account its purpose and audience.

A good example of this is my work at one of the world’s largest financial institutions where I worked with technical and business owners to map a new process required to mitigate a gap triggered by a change in regulatory status. After completing the process maps and supporting documentation, including a data dictionary, I was asked to create a user guide. I sat down in front of a blank page in Microsoft Word and in two and a half days wrote the user guide from scratch, including creating custom headers, footers, new paragraph styles and screen shots indicating ‘click here’ et al.

For me, a project is about using my various skills to address the task at hand, identifying the sources of information and ownership, the best form of deliverable and influencing acceptance.