Collaborative writing on technical teams

Technical writers can enhance their team’s collaborative writing strategy by understanding peer reviews and using helpful feedback strategies. This can lead to quality documentation and stronger teams.

In this session, Danielle Vansia will explore the concept of collaborative writing on technical teams, with specific focus on developing an effective peer review process. She will share ideas on how to incorporate the reviews into docs-as-code workflow.

Key takeaways

• Collaborative writing leverages the diverse experiences of team members for documentation improvement and ensures consistency and a unified voice throughout the documentation.
• While providing feedback, it is important to address both successful elements and areas that need enhancement rather than merely pointing out the errors.
• Peer review allows writers to assess and provide feedback on each other’s work and helps to identify errors, inconsistencies, and areas for improvement.
• The peer review workflow comprises various stages, including content creation, review, feedback integration, and publishing documentation.
• Existing toolsets must be used while establishing a peer review process rather than introducing a new tool to the workflow.
• Team size is an important aspect that must be considered for an effective peer review process. Informal review works well for small teams while a rotational process works for large ones.
• Spelling, grammar, format design, template, and terminologies used are the things to be measured in a peer review process.

About the Speaker

Danielle Vansia is a Senior Technical Writer with experience in the edtech, healthcare, and fintech sectors. She started her career in higher education, where she developed an appreciation for good process documentation. She got involved in a few open-source projects and used this knowledge to make a full transition to technical writing. She currently works for Vantage, a fintech company, where she focuses on developing product documentation and technical marketing content. Danielle is passionate about helping others develop their technical skills and become better writers.