Most managers recognize the value you bring to your company. But at least once in your career, you’ll be confronted with someone in management who says, “Anyone can write. After all, we’ve been doing it since the first grade.” Of course, you write — it’s in your title, whether it is Technical Writer, Content Specialist, Document Developer, or any variation. What do we do day to day besides writing? Here’s a list.
- Research: To fully understand the subject, technical writers dive deep into technical specifications, product requirements, and user workflows. This might involve studying API documentation, analyzing software behavior, or reviewing engineering notes to create accurate and comprehensive content.
- Interviews: After researching, you need to talk to the people involved. We schedule and conduct meetings with SMEs, product, marketing, and support teams to extract detailed information, ask clarifying questions, and ensure the documentation aligns with the product’s functionality. It often involves understanding and then translating complex technical jargon into user-friendly language. *
- Content Planning: Before writing, we create outlines, content maps, or storyboards to organize information logically. We determine the best structure for the documentation, such as step-by-step guides, reference manuals, or troubleshooting sections, to meet user needs.
- Editing and Proofreading: If we’re starting from existing material, we review it for grammar, spelling, punctuation errors, and technical accuracy. We also ensure consistency in tone, style, brand, and terminology across all pieces.
- Tool Management: We create, format, and manage content using specialized tools like MadCap Flare, Oxygen XML, Markdown editors, and Content Management Systems. We become power users of version control systems like Git to manage documentation updates and collaborate with teams.
- Graphic Design: To enhance understanding, we create and collaborate on flowcharts, diagrams, screenshots, and infographics. We sometimes take schematics and add our callouts to show the end user what’s essential.
- Testing Documentation: To ensure accuracy, we test procedures, code snippets, or step-by-step instructions in real-world scenarios. All of these must work in the user’s world. To do this, we set up software environments, run scripts, or follow installation guides to verify our documentation’s correctness.
- Collaboration: A significant part of our day-to-day job is working closely with cross-functional teams, including developers, product managers, and UX designers, to gather information and ensure documentation aligns with product updates and user needs. We coordinate with localization teams for translation and internationalization efforts.
- User Feedback Analysis: It’s critical to review user feedback, support tickets, and analytics to identify pain points or gaps in the documentation. This helps them prioritize updates and improve the overall usability of the content. Sometimes, we get it wrong. It’s our job to find out what and why and fix it!
- Compliance and Standards: If you work in any regulated industry, you must ensure your documentation meets standards and regulatory requirements (e.g., 21 CFR Part 820, GDPR, HIPAA, etc.). This can involve working with legal or compliance teams to verify that content meets all necessary guidelines. During FDA and ISO audits, you may be required to provide clear answers on your processes and procedures — and provide evidence to back that up.
So you see, you do more than type and make the documentation “look pretty.” The next time someone says that’s all you do, tell ’em otherwise.