The Path to Great Relationships Part #4. Technical Writer and Project Manager
Hi all! My name is Margarita, I’m a Project Manager at SoftServe. I’m happy to share with you my first article.
I’d like to share my experience with the fruitful cooperation between the PM and Tech Writers on the project. My article is built on the collaboration of Technical Writers — Robert Klimkiewicz and Daria Hrechishkina.
Firstly, let’s understand who a “Technical writer” is, what are their main responsibilities and values for the project, and what our collaboration looks like. This will give you the full picture of the Tech Writers role and probably you will also be interested in hiring such people to improve your project level and client satisfaction.
Who is a Technical Writer?
Many of us, having a huge experience in the IT sector and working in different roles, still don’t know what the “Technical Writer” role means and what value they bring to the project. The main goal of the Tech Writers’ duties is to improve the project documentation, write and support user guides so that anyone can read it, understand the project and its functions, and create videos for the project or any other materials if needed.
Talking about choosing the appropriate candidate for this role, our perfect match has a grip on understanding the business aspect of clients’ products and delivering all kinds of user assistance. They can communicate with system-oriented developers and business-oriented stakeholders effectively, drive full-dress investigation before getting down to presenting the findings to the audience, and organize various types of information into self-contained pieces. For sure, their English (or other language needed for the project) is at the Advanced level, so they can create flawless content. I always pay attention to their communication skills as it’s a key requirement to create effective content. They need to have experience working with different content-creation tools (such as pictures, text, and videos). In addition, an important aspect is an attentiveness to the details, diving deep into the project area, and understanding its requirements.
How does PM collaborate with TW?
The Project Manager needs to be proactive and collaborate effectively with all team members, and the Technical Writers are no exception. Talking about my experience, I have regular weekly syncs with my TWs team, where we discuss their progress, blockers, and other project-related questions. Apart from that, we have regular 1–1 meetings and we can always set up on-demand meetings if needed. In my opinion, the focus here should be on effective communication, when everything is visible — PM understands the progress and sees the full picture, as well as TWs see their directions and understand what is required from them considering the further steps.
What kind of content do they create?
My Technical Writers team works on updating the user guide documentation adding new function descriptions in alignment with specific formatting. The future plans are to create a bunch of videos about our project, so if one doesn’t want to read a lot, they can simply watch the video and drink coffee in parallel :)
Why is the TW role important?
For our project, it is crucial to have dedicated Technical Writers, as previously the user guide was updated by the QC team. But after hiring qualified specialists, they improved our user guide incredibly so that our clients become more satisfied. It’s also planned to implement an online platform with interactive features that will be more user-friendly, comfortable, and interesting to read.
How are we building relationships?
The most important value for me in working with the team is to build trust, respect, transparency, and support. We are open with each other, help each other, and ensure everyone feels comfortable during their work. I’m trying to create a family environment for my project.
How do two TWs share the work with each other?
On the project, I have two Technical Writers. They collaborate effectively, so it’s not needed to micro-manage their work. They are very independent and strong at their level, so we just sync up during our status meetings. If they need to discuss something, they can organize separate meetings for that. We don’t have a huge load on the project, so it’s quite easy to divide it between them as well as to work on the improvements and support other teams.
I am pretty sure, that after reading this you will have no doubts whether you need TWs on the project!
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