Cross-functional communication for technical writers

Cross-functional teams have become a cornerstone in today’s dynamic landscape of product development. These teams, comprising of diverse professionals from coding to QA, aim to deliver a complete product, including documentation. However, technical writers often face unique challenges in this setup.

In this session, Raghuram Pandurangan, Senior Manager of Content, PayU discusses how technical writers can effectively collaborate with other team members, leveraging their unique skills to contribute to the team’s overall success.

Key takeaways

Adapting to Agile:

• Technical writing has evolved alongside software development. While the early 2000s saw a reliance on Document development life cycle (DDLC) and waterfall models, later technical writing moved to Agile.
• It is important for technical writers to be an active member of the agile team. Early access to development through participation in sprint planning and reviews allows technical writers to understand upcoming features and user pain points. This fosters user advocacy and informed UI/UX feedback.
• Extracting information from every interaction- JIRA item, product issue identified during sprint planning/review, ensures context is captured by the technical writers.
• Documentation for a feature is completed one sprint after its development. For example, feature in sprint 1, documentation in sprint 2, this approach minimizes rework due to potential product changes.

Using Generative AI:

• Transparency is key when using Gen AI. It is necessary for technical writers to obtain written approval from management, educate them on the potential and limitations of Gen AI.
• Technical writers must emphasize maintaining confidentiality and data privacy while using AI tools. They must get approval from the IT team if necessary to access the AI tools like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity.
• For example, Gen AI use cases at PayU includes generating FAQs, proofreading, code generation, walkthroughs, and SEO meta description generation.

Collaborating with support & product teams:

• Collaborating with product managers, project managers, developers, and stakeholders is crucial. Building a rapport with them facilitates smooth collaboration.
• Especially in startups, understanding user pain points from a broader stakeholder perspective helps create impactful documentation for your website.
• Product teams should provide information like upcoming features and release schedules to help writers prioritize documentation tasks.
• The design documents or the internal content shared by product teams can be used as an input for creating the documentation.
• Technical writers must have a good rapport with support teams to understand user issues and improve documentation. This can be achieved by regularly communicating with support teams.
• Set up a process where support teams can be the final reviewers and proofreaders of the documents, not just the verification & validation (V&V) team. Collaboration tools like Office 365 and Acrobat can be used for document sharing and feedback.

About the Speaker

With more than two decades of experience in technical writing, Raghuram is dedicated to helping organizations and writers overcome their challenges. His expertise includes adopting authoring tools, documentation strategy, and automating review and publishing workflows. Earlier, he served as an STC India Chapter volunteer in various roles such as Vice President (2 years) and Membership Manager (4 years). Currently, he serves as a Core member of Tech Write Pro. He owns and moderates the Technical Writer Forum group on LinkedIn with ~53K members.