Why is it important to have a technical writer in your team?

In order to answer this question, first of all, it is important to define what a technical writer is. After reading and searching different definitions, we can conclude that a technical writer is a professional of the communication aimed at transforming complex information (specially, within the IT field) into a simple one, making it easier to understand. For accomplishing such objective, it is needed to make some research on the topic you will be writing, and it is essential to meet with experts (SMEs) who can help you on understanding technical aspects. Technical writing is also defined as a fact of simplifying the complex. For that reason, it is important that we can document complex processes making them easily understandable by different target audiences. In addition, this will help the experts to be focused on their technical tasks, instead of writing documents, which may be something tedious and boring. Furthermore, the fact of having good documentation, different repositories and clear content will lead to lure new customers and keep those already there.

Who can be a technical writer? Good news! Anyone who likes writing, and documenting with communication skills can become a technical writer.

Necessary skills

Apart from fluent writing, different languages and researches, there are some skills which may help to obtain better results when you are working as a technical writer. Some of them can be detailed as follows:
• Business analysis • Computer scripting • Content management • Content design • Illustration/Graphic design • Information architecture • Information design • Cloud concepts (AWS/Azure) • Technical translation • UX/UI – UX writing • Web design • Programming/Markup languages: Python, SQL, HTML, XML, Markdown.

DocOps Process Within the community of technical writing, the concept of DocOps (Documentation Operations) has emerged. As there is a DevOps concept, the process of DocOps involves following some steps to write technical documentation, divided into different stages: Creation, Management & Release. Basically, this is creating a framework to our writing process. Steps involving the DocOps process can be observed in the following image:

Deliverables Deliverables are those documents which a technical writer usually writes, such as: • White papers • Release notes • Procedure manuals • Tutorials • Open API specs

Tips & Tricks

1. Knowing your target audience. Before writing any draft, it is important to know your target audience to whom your document will be addressed. For instance, it is not the same to assume your audience will know a technical acronym that you need to clarify it between brackets. When we have more than one target audience (e.g., general users vs. experts), it is necessary to include headers splitting topics from general to technical so that the reader can choose the section he/she is interested in reading.
2. Researching. Gathering information from different reliable sources is always a MUST for this profession. Then, you should analyze such information to easily understand while writing the document.
3. Using impersonal style. It is important to write in the 3rd person so that we can be objective.
4. The simpler, the better. Try to be as simple as possible. Consequently, your document will be easier to understand. Besides, avoiding long sentences is a good practice; always be focused on the objective of the document and never include abstract ideas.
5. Including elements for “scanning” the document. It is broadly known that people usually do not read the whole document. So, we need to include some elements, like the bold type to highlight words, headers, hyperlinks, diagrams, images, to have a fast reading of the document; that is to say the possibility of “scanning” it.

Conclusion As a conclusion, I would like to state the following phrase summarizing the importance of technical writing: “If you are not able to explain it simple, you don’t quite get it.” – Albert Einstein