Stop treating technical writing like a second-class citizen

File this under another technical writing frustration.

Imagine that you are an application developer. You finish an app for a client that you send for review. The app is clearly labeled as a “testing version,” and includes source code (yes, I know this last part doesn’t happen, but just humor me for a bit). You are meticulous with your updates, keeping track of version control and changes. You ask the client to review it and get back to you. You move on to work on other projects, forgetting about the request. A few weeks later, you remember the project, and realize that you hadn’t heard from the client. You contact them to follow up, and are chagrined to learn that not only are they using your test version app in production, they also changed the source code for what they need.

Sounds outrageous, right?

Now, substitute the following words and phrases: “technical writer” for “application developer,” “document” for “app,” “draft” for “testing version,” and “MS Word” for “source code.” Welcome to my world.

This is an actual workplace scenario that happened to me a while back, and I was reminded of this recently when the same client asked me for an MS Word version of a document (that I had sent as a PDF — I was never, ever going to send them an MS Word doc again) so they could make changes. I refused, and I told them why.

The client in question had taken my Word document — the one that I had asked them to review — and I will add that I had DRAFT stamps all over it — and were using it in their production environment. Not only that, they had made changes to it for their purposes.

Well, I found and incorporated their changes, removed the DRAFT stamps (they were obviously okay with the document), and slapped a version number on it.

I also told myself that I was never sending them a Word document ever again. They were only getting PDFs from me.

I’ll be honest. What the client did absolutely pissed me off. By “changing the document for their needs,” they completely compromised and undermined my work, they blatantly stepped on my toes, and they completely disrespected what I do.

Most of the clients I work with aren’t like this, which is why I usually don’t have a problem sending a Word document (with DRAFT stamps) out for review. Thankfully, the scenario I just described is, in my environment, the exception, not the rule. Sadly, however, there are still too many people who hold this attitude that documentation is just a side item, and treat it like a second-class citizen.

This is one of the things that drives me to do SQL Saturday talks. This is why I do my presentations. This is why I rant about poor treatment of documentation. And this is why I actively tried to leave a job.

I’ve said this time and again. Document development needs to be treated in the same way as software development. The life cycle, including version control, is no different. Not doing so undermines what documentation is. It’s a critical function in application and professional development. And as someone who has had experience in both application and documentation development, I demand: stop treating documentation like a second-class citizen.

First drafts are ugly

“The secret to life is editing. Write that down. Okay, now cross it out.”

William Safire, 1990 Syracuse University commencement speech

“No thinking – that comes later. You must write your first draft with your heart. You rewrite with your head. The first key to writing is… to write, not to think!”

William Forrester (Sean Connery), Finding Forrester

“Just do it.”

Nike

I will confess that this article is a reminder to myself as much as anything else.

Raise your hand if you’re a writer, and whatever it is you’re writing has to be perfect the first time around. Yeah, me too.

How many times have you tried writing something, but in doing so, you hit a wall (a.k.a. writer’s block) because you don’t quite know how to put something in writing? Or how often have you written a first draft, only to take a second look at it a second time and say, “what a piece of s**t!”

(And speaking as someone with application development experience, this happens with writing code, too. Don’t think that this is limited to just documentation. This is yet another example of how technical writing and application development are related.)

Someone (I don’t know whom) once said, “one of the stupidest phrases ever coined is, ‘get it right the first time.’ It’s almost never done right the first time!” In all likelihood, you need to go through several iterations — review, editing, rewriting, etc. — before a draft is ready for public consumption. It’s called a “draft” for a reason.

The fact is, nobody has to see what you write the first time around. If you’re trying to get started on a document, just write what’s on your mind, and worry about making it look nice later.

For every action, you need a reaction

I came across yet another example of bad interface design this morning.

After I logged into my computer, a pop-up window appeared. It was my Docker application, telling me that an update was available and ready to install. Okay, I said to myself, and clicked the button to proceed.

Except… nothing happened.

I clicked it again. And again. And again. I mashed the mouse button. Nothing. I decided there was a problem with the interface, went on with my work, and forgot all about it. At one point, I saw a Docker window appear, saying updates were being applied. Okay. Again, I went back to what I was doing.

I didn’t think anything of it — until I looked at my taskbar several minutes later. All along the taskbar were several new — and identical — icons that I hadn’t seen before, roughly one for each time that I had hit the mouse button. When I clicked each icon, I was greeted with a window that said “installation failed.” Well, almost all. The second-to-last one I clicked said, “installation succeeded.”

Yet another example of horrible design rears its ugly head.

As an application end user, if I click something where it says “click here,” I expect — and demand — that it does something. It doesn’t matter what it is. Granted, I would prefer that it performs the action that I expect when I click it, but even if all it does is change the mouse pointer, display an “in progress” icon, or display an error message, I expect some kind of response that indicates that my action did something.

An action that results in nothing is a huge pet peeve of mine, and, in my opinion, is extremely horrible design. A click that does nothing tells me that the application is doing exactly that: nothing. Having an action with no response is not only annoying, it can be potentially dangerous. What if — hypothetically — clicking a button resulted in lost data, but there was no indication as such?

A reaction is a form of feedback. If I click a button, a reaction — even if all it is is an in-progress icon — tells me that the application is doing something. If I click a button, and it does nothing, then I expect the application is doing nothing. An action without any reaction results in frustration on the part of the end user, and potentially dangerous side effects if the application performs an action that the user doesn’t expect.

If this is how you design your UX, then you need to rethink your design. When it comes to interfaces, every action must have a reaction.

Playing in the sandbox is important for documentation

While working on a user guide, I realized that I had administrative rights to the application I was trying to document. That was all well and good, except that I was trying to write a non-admin user guide, and I needed to know how someone who didn’t have admin rights saw the application. Fortunately, one of my co-workers sent me an application URL and a testing user login I could use that simulated exactly what I needed.

That brings me to today’s article. Many application development environments make use of a sandbox, or some other development, environment where a developer can play to their heart’s content — that is, some place where someone trying to test or develop applications can play with the app without having to worry about breaking anything important. That same testing environment is just as important for a technical writer.

Much of my work as a technical writer involves putting myself in an end user’s shoes. I’ll often go through an interface and document the steps a user might use, what a user might see on the screen, and the effects of certain buttons and links. One of my most frequent questions when I work on documenting an application is, “what happens when I click this?” After I do so, hopefully my next response isn’t “oh crap!”

This is why a tech writer needs access to a testing environment. Like application developers who need to test within a safe environment, a person documenting the system needs to be able to document the system and be able to do so knowing that (s)he won’t adversely affect the application by playing with the system.

I wrote previously that a tech writer can help an application developer, and vice versa. Indeed, the tech writer can function as an in-house QA analyst. In order to write good documentation, the writer needs a realistic environment in which (s)he experiences what an end user might see. Having a sandbox environment in which a writer can “play” provides exactly that type of environment. As an added bonus, not only does this allow the tech writer to produce better documentation, it allows that person to provide feedback regarding the application, which ultimately results in a better application.

Testing something? What’s the test plan?

Imagine if you will that you’ve been asked to test a product. The product could be anything — software, a car, a kitchen appliance, a piece of sports equipment, whatever. For the purposes of this article, we’ll say you’re working at some company, and you’ve been asked to test a piece of software.

You’re told to go into an application, and you’re given this instruction.

“Okay, test it and see if it works.”

That’s it.

How would you feel? Vague? Confused? Frustrated? Abandoned? All of the above? Something else?

Well, I, myself, have been put into this situation more times than I care to admit. It’s one of the most frustrating job situations I’ve ever been thrust into.

What, exactly, constitutes “see if it works”? I could simply start the application, see if it starts, and say, “okay, it works.” I suspect that that’s not what the people who make the request are looking for. Yet time and again, I get a request from a developer or a designer to test something, and that’s the only instruction I’m given.

And it’s frustrating like you wouldn’t believe.

What’s even more frustrating is when (not if) the application comes back with some kind of problem, and the people who asked you to test come back with, “you said you tested this! Why is this broken?”

Want to know why there’s so much friction between developers and QA personnel? This is a likely reason. This is something that definitely falls under my list of documentation pet peeves.

The fact is, if you develop a product, and you need to test it for functionality, you need to specify what it is you’re looking to test. You need to define — and spell out — what constitutes a “working product” from one that’s “defective.” Just because a car starts doesn’t mean it’s working. You still need to put it in gear, drive it, steer it, and make sure that it can stop.

If you are creating a product, you need to describe what parameters are required for it to pass testing. If you’re asking someone in quality control to test your product, provide the tester with guidelines as to what should be checked to ensure the product is functional. Better, provide him or her with a checklist to determine whether or not your product can be released. If you discover additional items that need to be tested, then update the checklist.

(If you want to know more about checklists, I highly recommend The Checklist Manifesto by Atul Gawande. It’s actually a surprisingly excellent read.)

So any time you release a product for testing, tell the testers what it is that constitutes a “good” product. Don’t just send it off with vague instructions to “make sure it works” and expect it to be tested. More often that not, that will result in a failed product — and defeat the entire purpose of why you’re looking to test it in the first place.

I network. What’s your superpower?

I had some things happen just within the past week that reminded me about the power of networking, and just how well-connected I actually am.

At my CrossFit gym last week, one member of the racquetball club (which occupies the same building as the CrossFit gym) and whom I knew from a previous job, told me he might be looking to move on. I told him to connect with me over LinkedIn, which he did.

The other day, another friend from another former job also told me he was looking, and was wondering if I knew anyone whom he could contact about opportunities. I told him to email me his resume, along with an email and phone number where he wouldn’t mind being contacted by recruiters, and a quick description of the position he was seeking. I took his information and submitted a referral to several recruiters I know, most of whom said they would reach out to him.

And last night, I was contacted by my fraternity chapter, telling me that one of their recent graduates was looking into a technology career, and was wondering if I had any insights. We connected and chatted via email, and I told him to connect with me on both LinkedIn and Facebook. Additionally, about a month ago, I signed up for a mentoring program, also organized by my fraternity, and I was assigned a pledge (I believe the politically-correct term they’re using these days is “membership candidate” — sorry, I’m old school) as my mentee. A little while ago as I was writing this, I made arrangements to meet with both of them tomorrow afternoon, so I’ll be taking a quick day trip out to Syracuse tomorrow. (As an added bonus, tomorrow is Syracuse’s Spring Game, which gives me another reason to make the trip.)

(I have a number of other experiences involving mentoring and paying it forward that I’ve been meaning to write up in a yet-to-be-written ‘blog article, but I haven’t yet gotten around to it. Stay tuned.)

For those of you keeping score at home, that’s four different people connected to me through three different ways (well, four if you count that one of those contacts is connected through both my gym and a former job). That represents just a small fraction of my network. My network extends a lot further than that (last I checked, I had more than five hundred LinkedIn connections), which enables me to connect these people with many more.

Networking is a powerful tool when it comes to advancing your career. Whether you’re looking to make a move, learn something new, or improve your standing, you need to actively network. You never know where it might lead.

The symbiotic relationship between documentation and application development

One of my current projects involves documenting processes for an application that are still under development. As such, much of what I write may change, depending on how processes are changed during the course of development.

At one point, I tested one of the processes so I could determine functionality and document it. In doing so, the process came back with an error message that I wasn’t expecting and didn’t have any user-friendly information, other than a cryptic error code. I contacted one of the developers working on the application and told him what I found. I gave him the error codes I experienced and steps I took to get them. He told me, “you’re coming across bugs that we didn’t even know we had.”

It occurred to me that I was doing more than just documenting the application. I was also acting as a beta tester.

One aspect about writing technical documentation is learning about what you’re writing. In order to write about a process, you need to understand how it works. If you’re documenting an application, the best thing you can do is run the application in a safe environment (such as development or a sandbox), learn how it works, and use it to document steps and capture screens. In doing so, you come across application bugs and even come up with ideas to make the application even better.

I’ve long argued as to the criticality of documentation. It records important information and serves as a reference. However, until this point, it didn’t occur to me that the document development process could have a symbiotic relationship with application development. To me, this adds further fuel to the argument that documentation is critical and required.
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