Adrian Warman has started a series of posts on his blog about the future of technical writing. In today’s post, Farewell to the technical writer, he argues the traditional role of a technical writer is no more:
“Marketing and sales specialists, designers, developers, developer advocates, support and operational people – indeed almost anyone associated with the overall creation and delivery of a service or product – are all perfectly capable of creating content that might not be perfect, but is good enough.”
There are many good points in Adrian’s post, and we look forward to the rest in this series. However, there is a counter argument to be made:
- Why do organisations still buy Flare or RoboHelp, when they could use Markdown? We would suggest it’s because projects often become more complex over time. You start to need support more than one version of a product (the professional and the standard version, for example); you need to support more than release version; you end up developing bespoke versions for your biggest customer; you need to localise the content for international markets. As the products become more complex, so can the documentation, and it can be a struggle to manage this complexity in an efficient way with Markdown.
- While the writing can be straightforward, the publishing process for Markdown content can be complex.
- If people have two responsibilities (code and write user content), one of those tasks may be not given the time and attention it needs. It might be better to have one person focusing on a single task.
- Only half the time in a documentation project is actually spent on writing. There’s a lot of planning and research that should go on before that into what users need from the content. Programmers may struggle with that aspect (although UX developers less so).
- A Technical Author might be cheaper than a programmer or a UX developer. If you can free their time, by delegating the writing activity to a Technical Author, you might enable them to focus on more productive activities.
The traditional role of a Technical Author is certainly changing, and there is likely to be a more collaborative authoring process. However, the Technical Author can still add value.
Thank you for your excellent and thoughtful counter points.
I agree with them, which might be unexpected – but that’s because I still feel strongly there is a undeniable need for people with writing skills. The problem is that there are more people now within organizations who can also create content. Therefore, the ‘traditional role’ for people with writing skills has effectively gone.
I believe we must stop pretending otherwise and proceed to redefine and refine what the new role is, by taking it beyond a protected territory of creating prose, and into a more modern role that adds distinctive value. Indeed, many of the characteristics you list above.
Thank you again.