Technical writers are an important part of any software development team working on projects or products with customer-facing components.

Whether you're creating a simple UI-based tool for customers without any technical experience or an API with complex parameters that pose a challenge to even the most experienced developers, a technical writer bridges the information gap between your development team and the end-user.

So, how do you integrate a technical writer into your agile development environment? What role(s) does a technical writer perform within your organization's development team?

In this post, we will cover some tips for doing just that!

Scrum and Planning Meetings

Technical writers are often considered outsiders within an engineering environment. They are typically outnumbered by engineers and frequently work with multiple engineering groups at the same time. This makes it easy to see them as an outside entity rather than a member of the scrum team.

However, this perception doesn't take into account the many hats a technical writer wears.

A technical writer is like an embedded reporter, writing stories about the projects the scrum team(s) are working on. Those stories benefit from having detailed knowledge of not only what the project is about, but what decisions went into its creation.

Knowing why it made more sense to create a feature with one set of parameters over another helps the writer to explain the benefits (and potential snags) to the audience.

Consider including technical writers in scrum meetings, as well as in planning sessions where new projects are conceptualized. This will not only provide much-needed context to the writer but save your team time explaining these details later on.

Location

One common mistake organizations make in their office layouts is to group technical writers in with marketing, design, etc., and sit them with those teams, away from the engineering department.

In an in-person working environment, you should consider sitting your technical writers with the engineers. Separating them physically prevents the writers from hearing and absorbing the day-to-day discussions that happen, often resulting in missed opportunities for documenting changes as they occur.

Development Environments

It's important for technical writers to have access to the same level of development/testing environment as the engineering teams. Even if it's a local deployment of a nightly build, being able to explore and see the code in advance of the documentation being required gives writers a head start on their work.

The amount of time the writer has to use and document the upcoming release, the better the documentation.

This also allows technical writers to fill another important role that they often do: testing. In order to document a new feature, writers test their documented steps. This enables them to not only discover bugs in their documentation but often to uncover bugs in the code and/or product ahead of release.

Time

The most valuable commodity of any professional's day is time. Putting aside time for the technical writer to interview members of the team is essential to good documentation. Not only does it allow the writer to ask questions to gain a better understanding of the product, but it also gives your team the opportunity to discover and correct any inaccuracies in the documentation prior to its publication.

Product managers, project managers, engineers, and architects should set aside a block of time to work with technical writers on any new significant release. This time may be used doing technical checks of documentation drafts or simply syncing up with the writer to go over any upcoming changes they need to be aware of.

Forums and Chat Channels

Especially in larger organizations, engineering scrum teams often have private channels where they can share information with one another outside of in-person meetings. This may be internal boards within your Khoros Communities site, team chat channels, issue tracking platforms, collaborative software, etc.

Inviting the technical writer into this space is a great way to ensure they stay informed about what the team is working on, and whether or not changes are in the works that may require additional documentation.

It also gives them the ability to ask questions outside of scheduled meetings and emails that can be quickly answered without the need to set aside a set time.

Summary

Technical writers are a unique part of any organization. They are not themselves engineers, but they typically work best in an environment where they are amongst them.

In an Agile environment, technical writers don't just provide documentation. They perform multiple roles that touch on engineering, quality assurance, product management, and of course documentation.

Do you have technical writers on your team? What are some of your tips, tricks, and best practices? Share them in the comments section below!