Technical Writing

some amount of duplication is always going to occur. But for the most part, linking liberally, arranging topics in a sensible way, and trying to adhere to a single source model is a good idea.

A good structure is something you can trust. It relieves you from the burden of remembering and keeping track of everything. If you can trust the system, you can let go of the attempt to hold everything together in your head and you can start focusing on what is important: The content, the argument and the ideas. By

you also have to know when to write them! This is where the Documentation Timeline and Schedule come in. The purpose of these tools is to help you work out the timeframe of your project (i.e. create a schedule), and put that schedule into a format that others can understand.

Learn everything about a subject. Write down exactly what an audience needs to know and no more. Make the content beautiful, discoverable, scannable, and searchable. Consider everything a draft, and iterate relentlessly. Make contribution simple.

Technical writers can be invaluable partners across the product development life cycle.

Technical writers, first and foremost, are testers and researchers. Your job is to know what people want to achieve and precisely how to achieve it.

Improve predictability of technical writing projects.

The process is intended to introduce formality, structure and predictability into technical documentation projects. This comes at an upfront cost, of course – it takes time to create Documentation Plans and Documentation Schedules. However, the benefits of adding structure quickly become apparent, as the project produces better quality deliverables