Benefit of Tech Writers

[Barry West <Barry_West -dot- S2K -at- S2KEXT -dot- S2K -dot- COM>]

Rose wrote:

>So the question is this: how much time do you spend getting information from
>engineers (e.g., how many hours a week) in order to write and maintain a
>technical document?  Also, how do you get this information--on the phone, in
>writing, in regularly scheduled meetings, in casual office time?  etc.


In my present situation, I spend almost no time talking to engineers to get
information about the software. The reason is that we have ISO development
procedures that make life a great deal easier for everyone concerned. Usually,
when I talk to an engineer, it is for a very quick point of clarification.
Software designers are not allowed to develop an application or application
function without an approved written design. In addition, the project group
must include the doc writer in design and team meetings - meetings that they
would hold regardless of whether the writer was there or not. I may ask a
question or two in the meeting, but very often, my questions are answered
simply by listening. Usually, if I am confused about something, others are as
well.

With that said, the best I can tell you is that it depends on the way your
software is developed, on the attitudes of the development team with which you
work, on the effectiveness of your management to organize and control
development projects, and on the analytical abilities of the Tech Writer.

I have been in situations were the software was designed and developed in
someone's head, with no design spec. Obviously, in those situations, you have
to spend more time picking the developer's brain. I have been in situations
where there was existing engineering doc, but the project person was not
willing to share it and was not willing to free up much of his time to talk
about it. On the other hand, I have written about very complex applications
which took none of the engineers' time because I had training personnel,
classes, and support people available to me for training and review. Like I
said before, it depends.

I think you have to just continue to emphasize the benefits of a good Technical
Writer. In most cases, it is not the objective of a Technical Writer to save
the technical project person 100% of his or her time. That will probably never
happen. However, a good Technical Writer can come in and save the engineering
staff 90 to 95% of the time the engineer would have to spend writing the doc
themselves. You need to ask your management if they would rather their
engineers spend 200 hours involved in a writing  project or spend 10 to 20
hours reviewing and commenting on the doc. Also, your manager really needs to
look at the efficiency factor that a writer brings to the table. Typically,
engineers, although technically competent, don't like to write, they don't want
to write, they are not trained to write and they struggle with it. Beyond that,
even engineers who are good writers normally are writing the doc between other
responsibilities and can't focus on it except in bits and pieces. The result is
very often a terribly written manual, a manual that takes significantly more
time to write than it should, or both. A focused writer can increase the
efficiency of writing the doc by two times, three time, or more.  The Technical
Writer may not have all the answers, but an experienced Technical Writer is
skilled in working with the technical staff. If you have good writer, the
company ends up with a good doc written on time, with minimal drag on the
engineering staff.


Barry West
Barry_West -dot- S2K -at- s2kext -dot- s2k -dot- com