Technical documentation can take a spiral web of describing complex concept and special terminology to suit the specific audience. Although, this is a well known fact, but to transform your writing from the simple steps writing for a procedure to describe a scientific concept in cutting edge technology, which is just defining, could take a tough toll at time. Visibly for a new writer, it could be nightmare to understand the subject and write about them. Even for that matter, the experienced writers would struggle.
However, understanding of the subject and relating the entire steps, procedures and concepts into a meaningful perfect document is the real challenge for a technical author to test their writing ability. The very purpose of creating document is to preserve the knowledge to use for the larger audience or the customers. These customers could be the internal or the external ones. The aim of the documents changes according to the requirements. If you thought that technical writing means writing Users Guide, Installation Guide and Help files, then this is the time to think once again thoroughly and understand the requirement of technical writers in the industry. Probable you will not be restricted to writing these manuals only. You will be tested writing many more things such as requirement documents, white papers or the technical articles. Technical writer’s job is not merely going to be defined as about writing guides.
If you look at the entire job spec, which is slowly becoming clear, I bet, industry will have really tough time getting good writers. All those who thought that technical writing is all about knowing few of the writing and publishing tools and to know how to write a user manual then its better track your career now unless it is too late to mend your ways. When I made transition into technical writing knowing word processing and publishing tools were supposed to be the most important requirement. Now that is dying down, rather corporations have learnt that tool can be taught but not the art of writing.
Many consider technical writing as an art as well as a science. It is true that technical writing alone can not be an art because if you do not understand the science and technology about which you are supposed to write, it can not make you fare well. You can not consider it science either, even if you are convinced that it is based on style guides for paragraph, page layout and graphics unless you are able to present the information as the weaver of the words. To me, technical writing is an art to write about the science. I am sure; all of us will have different way of defining it and opine our voices on this subject.
One more aspect which is conceived arbitrarily is the concept that technical writers get knowledge from the subject matter expert and transform that knowledge into simple, legible and easy information for the end users. Domain hardly plays any barrier for the writers because knowledge is preserved into the written format by the subject matter experts and they too are available for any discussion or clarification whenever required. This is the normal way of functioning of the large corporation where every thing is documented because of fear that the employees leave jobs without passing the full information and knowledge to the juniors and colleagues. The cost involved in the process and the time required is such that many a time it deviates the product release. The seer fact is that people who are forced to write these documents do not have good skills of writing and quite natural that it would take more time yet you can not be sure of quality. This does not include exceptions.
The smaller organization, which recognize this fact stresses that if a developer is involved in writing so many documents then they should very well write the user documents too. They believe that in such cases the role of a Technical Writer is just to collate and present the information in a better way. Definitely language cleaning is another area where more emphasis is given. But this is not all that expected from a technical writer. According to them, technical writer should collect the information on their own with different sources and that would let developer write only such information which can be understood by the fellow developer and in turn that will give them more time to complete their job faster. Subsequently technical writer will write the document, which will allow them to be involved more to understand the subject and in the process they would be enriching their knowledge in the domain.
One more concept, which suggests that a technical writer should not worry more about the domain, seems relatively not to be a good idea. “The domain knowledge is not necessary, wherever they go, they learn the terms of the trade”, sounds bit odd to me. Meaning you work in telecommunication domain and tomorrow you make a change in life science domain, I precisely feel the time taken to understand the new domain would put you back for some time. It could even be a bottleneck to prove your effectiveness in writing if you have not assessed it early. It might also hamper your growth too in a new setting because you are going to be rated freshly in a new environment. Well, this again is a personal preference, some can manage everything well and for some this could really pose a problem. The advice is to look at your strength and act.
For small product development company, “Speed” is the hallmark and that puts them in advantageous position comparing its larger adversaries, which ride on the back up of money, manpower and management. Looking at the scenario it seems that it is testing time for the technical writers to prove their worth in changing environment. Otherwise also if the industry has to be dependent upon the technical writers, they need to be mature enough to handle different situation. Ideally if they are able to handle such situation the pay cheque would not be a constraint. So, the catch is “show your competence to prove yourself”.
