Ideal Organizational Team Structure for Technical Writers

Technical writers are valuable as they create new knowledge for the company. If your company is building software products, technical writers are involved in the software documentation, UX microcopy, and troubleshooting guides. If your company is building hardware products, technical writers are involved in technical documentation and compliance documentation. If your company is a service provider, technical writers write user manuals, standard operating procedures, service documentation, etc. Where do technical writers fit in the whole organizational structure?   To whom should they ideally report to? More importantly, what are the roles and responsibilities of the team in terms of adding business value to the company?

The team that technical writers end up with matters as it affects how companies view technical writers. It also affects how technical writers can access resources, technology tools, and the governance process to influence key decisions in the company.  

Technical Writer in SaaS Product Company

Technical writers usually report to the Director, Product Manager, or Chief Product Officer via their manager. This helps technical writers collaborate more closely with developers, product managers, the QA team, and UX designers. This would aid in producing more comprehensive documentation on product features, how-to tutorials, and release notes. Working closely with developers helps technical writers understand the product feature functionality better to make more accurate documentation. The nuances in the product features can also be captured more effectively as technical writers have more product knowledge. This setup also helps UX designers and technical writers to produce more tailored messages and text. Having product managers, technical writers, and UX designers report to the Director, Product Management or Chief Product Officer is advisable to have a good functioning documentation team.

Some SaaS product companies have instances where technical writers report to customer support managers/directors.  Technical writers usually collaborate heavily with support agents, leading to a high volume of troubleshooting guides and amending existing articles with new content. This structure is highly beneficial for companies where the volume of support tickets is large and technical writers’ Key Performance Indicators are to increase the self-service rate. However, it does impact the software documentation quality as it is process-driven to produce good quality software documentation that details product features, configuration guides, APIs, and so on.

There are a few instances where technical writers report to the Marketing manager focusing on building documentation to generate traffic. Others are more focused on SEO-related practices to generate leads/prospects through software documentation.  In some cases, technical writers may report to the developer advocacy team whereby they interact with customers often to gather product feedback and also produce more educational materials for developers.

Nevertheless, technical writers generate immense value in creating new knowledge for SaaS products. Given the nature of SaaS products where frequent releases are required, technical writers have to be agile to produce good quality documentation in a limited time!

Technical Writer in Hardware Product Company

A technical writer in hardware product companies mostly reports to the Head of Product or Production Manager whereby product technical documentation, and hardware specification documents. They are heavily involved in producing compliance documentation for hardware certifications such as CE, FCC, and so on. This applies to heavily regulated industries such as healthcare, defense, and so on.

Working closely with the hardware design team, production engineers, process engineers and quality assurance team on the shop floor aids technical writers in producing more thorough high-quality documentation.

Technical Writer in Services Company

In the services industry, technical writers mostly report to the corporate governance team or the Chief Operating Officer. Their main focus is to create service manuals, standard operating procedures for front-line staff, compliance documentation, safety procedures, risk mitigation plans, and so on. Technical writers are also involved in change management processes during the company’s transition to new processes or technology tools. Given the nature of the service industry, which public agencies regulate, technical writers play a vital role in keeping their work up to date to ensure smooth service delivery while complying with respective regulations and legislations.

Also read: Technical Writing For Non-Technical Audience

Conclusion

Technical writers play a vital role in product and service-based companies in creating new knowledge. They are also bestowed upon with huge responsibility in keeping those knowledge repositories up-to-date by collaborating with various stakeholders across the company. Technical writers reporting line is very important as it sets their objectives and focus clearly. Whether technical writers are treated as cost centers or revenue generators depends on the business units/departments they are part of. Thus, it is important to empower technical writers to maximize their throughput.

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