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Any serious software development company should have enough source data
available in some form for the tech writer to answer 99% of all questions.
This source data, in my experience (and perhaps to my good fortune), has
always been readily available in the form of tech notes, release notes,
design notes, functional specs, PRDs/MRDs, feature databases, Javadoc, and
so on. Of course, the product UI/API is usually very informative as well.
Even digging into the code can reveal quite a bit. You can learn a lot by
just poking around or as Yogi Berra said, "You can observe a lot just by
watching."
Solid, comprehensive internal documentation is the sign of a professionally
managed dev team.
On the occasions when I do need to seek out direct contact with an engineer,
it is usually because things don't go right or work the way they've been
described and I am trying to confirm the accuracy of the source data. This
is usually a preliminary step to logging a bug report.
I agree with many of the respondents here in terms of how to approach and
phrase questions, but if you are in a situation where you must be in
constant contact with the engineers to get information, some unsettling
questions may need to be asked about the product and the level of internal
documentation.
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