Working as a Technical Communicator in a Tumultuous Software Development Environment: An Internship

by Heidtmann, Sara C.

The purpose of this internship report is to describe my experience as a Technical Publications intern in a tumultuous software development environment and to inform students and faculty at Miami University how the process maturity of a software development team affects how a technical communicator uses a problem-solving model. This report provides an overview of the work I did for Peregrine Systems and a detailed account of my work on the Peregrine Mobile project, for which I rewrote the documentation. This report also describes how I used and adapted Paul Anderson’s Problem-Solving Model to deal with the different software development methodologies employed at the Indianapolis office where I worked and the San Diego office where the rest of the Mobile project team worked.