The development of user assistance is a blend of a wide variety of skills. Technical communication skills provide the foundation. They are supplemented skills unique to the software development world. In this survey, we asked the respondents to value the importance of a number of skills commonly employed by user assistance professionals in their daily work. The figure below shows the top ten skills valued highly with a rating of "4" (Very Valuable) or "5" (Invaluable).

As in past versions of this survey, content development filled the top of the list. Writing procedures (92%) is number one with writing reference information in third place (79%). Interviewing, copy editing and developmental editing also make the top ten. Indexing just misses the cut (52%). Success in our field relies heavily on our ability to craft words into a structure that communicates clearly to the user.

Experience with authoring tools is a key skill with 85% valuing that highly. The nature of working with a digital medium like software user assistance requires the use of a variety of tools. A plumber needs a pipe wrench and we need our authoring tools. Job listings frequently include a variety of tools as prerequisites, so it pays to keep your tool skills current and comprehensive.

Working as software developers also requires us to be knowledgeable about markup and programming languages. Understanding HTML (72%) and Cascading Style Sheets (56%) are virtually requirements today. We place less emphasis on the importance of detailed knowledge of JavaScript (26%), XML (21%), or other programming languages (10%).

For the other skills in the survey, here are the percentages of respondents who rate them highly: task analysis (46%), graphics development (43%), usability testing (40%), management and supervision (37%), web design (37%), instructional design (30%), localization (27%), web-based training (14%).