Optimizing Documentation for Developers: A Conversation with Erin Rovelstad, Google

Transcript:

• 01:07 – 03:30 – Erin’s Journey into Technical Writing

  Gowri Ramkumar: Good day everyone. Welcome to the Knowledge Base Ninjas podcast. With me today we have got Erin Rovelstad, Senior Technical Writer at Google.

  Hi, Erin. How are you doing today?

  Erin Rovelstad: I’m doing great. Thanks.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Thank you. Thank you for being my guest and, sharing your knowledge with everyone. As always, please help us understand a little bit more about yourself. And how did you get into this amazing journey of documentation?

  Erin Rovelstad: Sure. Yeah. So I’m a Technical Writer at Google. I have been one for about five years now. When I started doing documentation, it was about seven years ago. So, when I graduated from college, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I had no idea that technical writing existed. And it was also, the great recession. So, I graduated right into that, and I went, okay, this is scary. I’m going back to grad school. Just delay the job market for a little while. And I thought maybe I’d go into academia and, doing the master’s program that I chose. I discovered that I did not want to go into academia.

  So I graduated from that, and I did freelance writing. I ended up in publishing for a little bit. And was kind of just bouncing around from opportunity to opportunity. And, one day, I kind of like, in frustration, I googled, you know, how do you make money as a writer? I expected it not to give me any sort of good response. You know, I’ll be a famous novelist or, that’s it. And it actually came back with something about technical writing.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Okay.

  Erin Rovelstad: I started looking into it, and it and actually sounded really interesting. And I actually remembered that when I had been doing my master’s degree, a couple of years prior, there was a program at the college, The same school for professional and technical writing. So I actually applied again to that program and got in, and it was a really great experience. That program really taught me a lot about professional and technical writing. Taught me that it was indeed what I wanted to do. It led me to an internship, which kind of moved me out to the Bay area. And I actually worked at LinkedIn for a couple of years. And then, moved to Google. And that’s where I have been ever since.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Great. Wow, what a great journey you have, Erin and, thank you for all the contributions to those big companies already.

   

• 03:30 – 05:17 – Turning Complex Developer Knowledge into Clear Docs

  Gowri Ramkumar: Now, given the varied audiences or, consumer as you have worked with, now what kind of strategies do you use to translate complex technical content into a very clear and accessible documentation?

  Erin Rovelstad: Yeah. So one of the interesting things about my role at Google is that I am a technical writer for other developers at Google. No one outside of Google is ever going to see any of the writing that I do. So my audience is already quite technical. The hard part is making sure that the technical like, where do you find the knowledge that they know?

  Because sure, they are technical, they know C++, they can code, they are geniuses. But where is that gap? Where is the, what is the thing they are trying to do with their job? What is the question that they have? And one of the ways that I kind of try to figure that out is by really building a close relationship with the developers that I’m working with.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Right.

  Erin Rovelstad: Yeah. I also talk extensively to my audience. So in this case, internal developers, that aren’t on my team. I try to make sure that I’m answering the questions that they have. I also take a look at our internal support Q&A. I have been working on trying to digest those questions and find insights in them. And that’s actually a really great. People hate surveys. Yeah. They are too busy. They are too busy to do surveys. They are too busy even to click like, a thumbs up, thumbs down on the doc.

  Gowri Ramkumar: But they will very often fill with inaccurate information. True.

  Erin Rovelstad: Yeah. But if they are running into problems in their job, they will often just ask a question

  from the experts. And so this is a really good place to find where the gaps are in the documentation.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Brilliant.

• 05:17 – 07:07 – Evaluating Docs with Freshness and Feedback

  Gowri Ramkumar: Now, you did explain that you work very closely with the developers and try to see what is the knowledge gap.

  Now, what kind of KPIs or metrics do you measure when it comes to the quality and adoption of the content that you are producing for them?

  Erin Rovelstad: Yeah. So this is, a great question.

  Some of the docs, metrics that I use, we have this measurement of freshness. So, like, when the doc was last updated, it kind of helps us keep an idea of how maintained the documentation set is and how trustworthy the docs might be. This isn’t like, the best indicator of quality, but it is a good indicator of like, developer engagement with content and like it helps people understand, when they are coming into the doc. Okay. This was updated within the last 12 months. It’s probably mostly up to date. I can probably reach out to the person who’s listed as an owner. You know, if I get to some page and it’s like last updated

  2016, it’s like, umm… this is probably not correct anymore.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Yeah.

  Erin Rovelstad: I also use other metrics like, just qualitative ones, where the developers are reporting problems. If someone gives me feedback on something that’s like, hey, this documentation is working really well, that’s definitely a really good indicator of quality. More often than not, people don’t report positive feedback. It’s mostly the negative ones that we hear.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Yeah.

  Erin Rovelstad: So that negativity bias is difficult, but it’s also helpful because it indicates, hey, this isn’t working. This definitely needs another look. This is, yeah, you know, erroneous, you know, all sorts of fun problems can be surfaced that way.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Absolutely. I mean, or we have to just take it like, everything is working perfectly when there is no comments or feedback, right?

  Erin Rovelstad: Exactly. Yes.

• 07:07 – 08:49 – Leveraging Developer Expertise for Clearer Documentation

  Gowri Ramkumar: Now, in a company like Google and, many other organizations where you have worked now, how do you balance between the speed of delivery versus quality?

  Erin Rovelstad: Yeah, that’s a really good question. So speed of delivery is really difficult on my team, especially, I am the only technical writer for an organization of about 220 developers. So speed is often, a trade off that we have because it is internal facing.

  Speed is not as critical as it is for a lot of my colleagues who are external facing technical writers who have very strict release schedules, and follow them. And, you know, that is that’s much more critical for me trying to find this trade off between, can my documentation come out when my users need it? Not necessarily right before they’re going to need it. But in enough time, and definitely quality is a huge focus.

  One of the things that I do is I rely a lot on developer contributions. Just because I am a at a ratio of, like, 1 to 220. Yeah. So, if developers are able to explain a concept, I will often provide just reviews for them, and make some suggestions about documentation best practices.

  But I find developers are really good at explaining this content, that they are writing about. They’re the experts in it. They have built it. And they are really good at explaining to their colleagues and like whiteboarding sessions. And so, usually when they come to me with, like a request, I ask them to think

  how they would explain it when they were right, whiteboarding rather than like writing a doc. And that seems to kind of help them break down concepts a little bit more easily.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Understand, understand.

• 08:49 – 10:31 – The Future of Technical Writing in the Age of AI

  Gowri Ramkumar: Now you are working with engineering teams and, how do you, envision the role of technical writing to evolve over the next years?

  Erin Rovelstad: Definitely.

  A topic on everyone’s minds with AI. I think that technical writing is actually becoming even more important. In the age of AI, we are the ones who make sure that the content is digestible and human readable.

  If the AI is being trained on content that is poor, that doesn’t have good quality and that is difficult to understand, then the AI is going to, you know, keep producing content that is difficult to understand and of poor quality.

  So I think that technical writing, actually becomes even clearer and more focused in the future. We have to make sure that our content is good, that the LLMs are ingesting, good data sources, learning from that, and that the content that those, things create will continue to help our users. So, I think it just kind of speeds up velocity.

  I know it’s kind of a scary time, and people are kind of worried about, you know, is AI going to take my job? And I, I’m hopeful that will not happen. I’m hopeful that people will see the value that technical writers, bring to the table and that they will see the value in having good content sources for large language models.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Absolutely, absolutely.

  I think, as you rightly said, this is the question that keeps lingering in majority of the, yeah, majority of their minds. But then everybody has spoke to exactly mentions the same thing, what you just spoke about.

  Brilliant.

• 10:31 – 11:53 – Scaling Documentation as a Team of One

  Gowri Ramkumar: Now, you did tell me that you are one writer supporting 200 to 220 engineers or developers. How do you do it?

  Now, what skills or habits you have that keeps you not too busy, but at the same time deliver what they want?

  Erin Rovelstad: Yeah, definitely.

  I early on developed a prioritization process. I also just have a lot of conversations with leads in my organization and other developer teams. Like, I do monthly check ins with a lot of teams just to be like, hey, are you maintaining your docs? How are things going? What’s coming up?

  Just kind of get a sense of what’s going on all around the organization. To make sure that I’m when I’m building my prioritization, that I’m focusing on the key, the key things, I also yeah, I’ve also been, started coming to the, the teams OKR planning, objectives and key results. I’m not sure if that’s an internal to Google term or not. Basically our larger team prioritization, process and, yeah, those are very.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Basically you interact with them very closely, as much as possible, just to make sure the priorities that you have aligns with the business need and the teams need.

  Erin Rovelstad: Exactly. And that I’m prioritizing the, the things that are the most, critical. Any documentation that’s, like, in seriously bad shape.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Great.

• 11:53 – 13:48 – ⚡Rapid Fire Round

  Gowri Ramkumar: Now let’s move on to our rapid fire round question.

  Any documentation related resources you have consumed recently or you wanted to share with the audiences today?

  Erin Rovelstad: Yeah.

  So I recently went to the Write the Docs conference, in Portland. I think it was, it was just a great opportunity to, to learn from all, all people in all sorts of parts of the discipline. I have also been reading, Manny Silva’s, Docs as Tests book recently. It’s really fascinating, to be able to think of how, like, you can take, documentation and actually test it, to make sure that it’s accurate. So that’s fascinating.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Nice.

  Now, what comes to your mind when you hear “Documentation”? That one word?

  Erin Rovelstad: Flexibility.

  I think that it’s really important to be agile and flexible when you are working with the developer audience, especially, and should be able to meet the developers where they are.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Okay. Okay. Great, flexibility.

  Now, a piece of advice you would give to your 20 year old self?

  Erin Rovelstad: My 20 year old self, had no desire to listen to any sort of advice. I thought she knew everything. So, I think the advice I would give is, there are no wrong turns along your path. For a while, when I was getting the first master’s degree, And, you know, I decided I didn’t want to do academia. I thought I had made a mistake. I thought I was like, oh, I’m in so much debt now. You know, I thought if I did not make those decisions and go along that path, I never would have discovered technical writing. I never would have learned a lot of things that helped me be a better technical writer. So I think that there’s no wrong turns on the path.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Alright. Everything is something good.

  Erin Rovelstad: Yes. Eventually.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Fantastic, Erin. And, Yes, you have amazed us with a lot of great updates and, particularly how you manage your time and the deliverables, given that you are only one writer supporting so many developers.

• 13:48 – 14:26 – Final Thoughts

  Gowri Ramkumar: Anything else you would like to add to our audience today?

  Erin Rovelstad: That’s a great question, and I don’t think so. I don’t think I have anything else. Thank you so much for having me.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Yeah. Thank you so much for taking your time and, spending this episode with us and all the very best for your future projects and, Yeah, let’s stay in touch.

  Erin Rovelstad: Absolutely. It’s been a pleasure.

  Gowri Ramkumar: Thank you!