Accountability is Coming to Software Documentation – Are You Ready?

Just read a good post by Tristan Bishop titled “What if no one READS the manual?” Click through to read all the details but the gist is that technical writers need to become more engaged with end users. This is exactly along the lines of what we said in our post about who should write your software documentation.

Bishop is correct. Many technical writers are going to face challenges in the upcoming years. They will increasingly be judged on the effectiveness of the content they create as opposed to the quantity of that content. As Bishop says:

• The anonymity of our job? Gone.
• Lack of external accountability? Gone.
• Quiet days building intricate books alone in a room? Gone.

Technical writers need to get closer to end users. They need to stop thinking about documentation projects and realize that they are in a communication flow where documentation constantly needs to be created and updated. Speed and an ability to adapt to changing circumstances will be the key skills needed for technical writers in the future.

So where are you at? Do you know how effective your software documentation is? Do you know if anyone is reading it? Do you know if it is decreasing support requests or improving product adoption? If you don’t know then you should find out quickly because pretty soon the next question will be “Are you a necessary part of this organization?”

If you need some ideas for improving the usefulness of your documentation check out our article, “5 Steps to Improving Your Software Documentation”.