Job . Employment . Career
10 Tips for Tech Writers
Tech-writing is a tricky business. It's not a very high profile
industry, so there's not much support around. Follow these 10
quick tips, and you'll be well on your way to a satisfying
tech-writing career.
By Glenn Murray
1) Follow a sensible career path…
STEP 1: Start in a team
STEP 2: Stay only just long enough
STEP 3: Manage yourself
STEP 4: Manage a team
STEP 5: Go contracting (depends on the market)
2) Knowledge is your lifeblood – learn
the politics of your company. Know who knows what. Find someone
who consistently gives you timely, reliable,
technically accurate answers, and get their name tattooed on your
shoulder! Every company has at least one. And they may not
be in the project manager/product manager/customer/programmer
roles. They are generally the people who've used the product in the real
world, and dealt with real world customers.
3) Communicate WITH,
not AT. Tech-writers don't have enough power to get
away with communicating at.
4) Track stuff (take spreadsheet printout and
write it up on the board).
5) Develop good product
and domain knowledge – The more you can figure
out for yourself, the better off you'll be (and the more respect you'll
get from the techies).
6) Find out who your users are, what
they are trying to do, what they are having trouble doing,
and how they want to be
helped. Then provide
this
assistance. Help the user do what they are trying to do. Don't just tell
them what the product can do… a
help system is only helpful if it addresses the users' needs.
7) Treat
everyone as a customer. Then manage their expectations and your commitments.
Always ensure they know what you're doing. Tell them when
you'll be finished.
And pull out all stops to meet your deadline.
8) Provide a surrogate
user testing mechanism for the development team – providing
usability feedback.
9) Work as hard as required to get good quality
doco finished on time and to budget – this is how you'll
get the satisfaction out of work that you need.
10) Have fun
with it.
Don't become jaded and cynical by the high-tech, harsh, uncaring
IT world. Use your smarts, and make the most of the resources
provided. Most importantly of all, make work satisfaction
your number 1 goal. It's the best way to stay happy and get ahead.
Glenn Murray heads copywriting studio Divine
Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com.
Visit www.divinewrite.com for further
details. |