10 Tips For Tech-writers

Tech-writing is a great business, but not everybody can afford to be in Tech-Writing Business. It’s a very high profile industry for those that understand how technology industries work.
So there’s not much support around. Follow these 10 quick tips, and you’ll be well on your way to a satisfying tech-writing career.

1) Follow a sensible career path … Appling this 5 listed steps
STEP 1: Start in a team
STEP 2: Stay only just long enough
STEP 3: Manage yourself
STEP 4: Manage a team
STEP 5: Go contracting (depends on the market)
2) Knowledge is your lifeblood – learn the politics of your company. Yes learn the in-depth of the technology industry, Know who knows what.
Find someone who consistently gives you timely, reliable, technically accurate answers, and gets their name stamped among your team member on your follow up list personal!
3) Communicate WITH, not AT. Tech-writers don’t have enough power to get away with communicating at. You see, it is different between communicating at and that of communicating with, communicating with stand for two peoples communication, while that of communicating at, stands for a single person communication, so learn to communicate with technology, don't assume guru, be on learning mode always
4) Track stuff (take spreadsheet printout and write it up on the board).
5) Develop good product and domain knowledge – The more you can figure out for yourself, the better off you’ll be (and the more respect you’ll get from the techies).
6) Find out who your users are, what they are trying to do, what they are having trouble doing, and how they want to be helped.
Then provide this assistance. Help the user do what they are trying to do. Don’t just tell them what the product can do… a help system is only helpful if it addresses the users’ needs.
7) Treat everyone as a customer. Then manage their expectations and your commitments. Always ensure they know what you’re doing. Tell them when you’ll be finished. And pull out all stops to meet your deadline.
Provide a surrogate user testing mechanism for the development team – providing usability feedback.
9) Work as hard as required to get good quality doco finished on time and to budget – this is how you’ll get the satisfaction out of work that you need.
10) Have fun with it.
Don’t become jaded and cynical by the high-tech, harsh, uncaring IT world. Use your smarts, and make the most of the resources provided.
Most importantly of all, make work satisfaction your number 1 goal. It’s the best way to stay happy and get ahead.