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This document is written from the perspective that a documentation writer is a dedicated role. In 10 years as an engineer I’ve never met a technical writer. It’
by vegetablepotpie 3y ago
This document is written from the perspective that a documentation writer is a dedicated role. In 10 years as an engineer I’ve never met a technical writer. It’s not a role I’ve ever seen hired.
To address the question in a general sense, you need to address the case when the developers are the technical writers. How do you integrate documentation to your work flow? How do you justify the time spent to management? How do you make sure it’s useful to a customer?
- nijave 3y agoThe companies I worked at with external facing documentation for their product (specifically APIs) had technical writers. One created a product with open source/closed source mix and had a dedicated person. The other worked with a contracting service to pay for a few weeks here and there when they were releasing something new.
- andylynch 3y agoI think it’s an under appreciated skill. I have worked on exactly one project with a technical writer (on retainer); the documentation was for a small internal audience but related to critical national infrastructure. It was money very well spent.
- euroderf 3y ago> How do you justify the time spent to management? A better (& simpler) way to approach it might be to get buy-in/consensus that after completion of an item, the developers as a group devote another 3%(?) of the accumulated development time to whatever documentation is required.