GETTING AHEAD AS A LONE AUTHOR

5 BEST PRACTICES

Kai Weber

22 September 2010

TCUK 10

WHO AM I AND WHAT DO I KNOW?

1988 – Technical writer

2001 – 2008 Employed lone writer

2008 – Senior Technical Writer, SimCorp

Coach, trainer, mentor

M.A. in American Studies

GETTING AHEAD AS A LONE WRITER?

Carl Rakeman: “Pony Express” http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/

GETTING AHEAD AS A LONE WRITER

Benign neglect

▼

Learn to run the job (more) like a business

5 best practices

▼

Raised profile

1. HOW TO BUY YOURSELF TIME

Eliminate internal inefficiencies.

Move to(wards) topic-based authoring.

Consider temporary skimping.

Fight external inefficiencies.

Resist or budget time-consuming tasks, such as testing.

Plan and schedule documentation.

Plunder time-saving methods and tools.

► Take charge of your time and your schedule.

2. HOW TO OPTIMIZE YOUR SKILLS

Assess and emphasize your (relative) strengths.

Add people skills.

Collaborate with colleagues and trade skills.

► Do what you do best and collaborate.

3. HOW TO TREAT DOC AS A BUSINESS

Estimate your documentation efforts.

Account for efforts, past and future.

Estimate writing, reviewing, editing by topic.

Use past efforts, averages and experience.

Embrace cost metrics.

Resist seductive, but misleading metrics.

Attribute efforts and costs to specific developments.

Turn topic reuse into a corporate asset.

► “You can’t control what you can’t measure.”

- Tom DeMarco

4. HOW TO MAKE DOCUMENTATION AN ASSET

Serve the customer, not the product or company.

Address user tasks, not product features or intentions.

Become the users’ advocate.

Verify with surveys and user analysis.

4. HOW TO MAKE DOCUMENTATION AN ASSET

Kathy Sierra

Creating passionate users

5. HOW TO COLLABORATE

Provide a clear interface

To your sources: Engineers, developers, SMEs

To stakeholders: Customer service, product managers, etc.

To your manager

Stand up for documentation and yourself.

… and don't whine about language, grammar, etc.

► Learn from your topics: Collaborate!

GETTING AHEAD AS A LONE WRITER

1. Buy Yourself Time

2. Optimize Your Skills

3. Treat Documentation as a Business

4. Make Documentation an Asset

5. Collaborate

Thank you!

KEEP IN TOUCH!

I blog at http://kaiweber.wordpress.com/

I tweet at @techwriterkai