Don’t sleep on your tech writer’s competence

Be honest - how early in the process of a new software project do you include your tech writer or UX writer? If you’re not including us from the start, you’re sleeping on tech writer competence.

Written by: Karin Askeroth

The job us writers in tech do is about viewing things from the end user's perspective and understanding what they need to learn. For us to be able to do as good a job as possible, we need to be given as good an opportunity as possible.

Worst case, we’re included as an afterthought. This creates a difficult situation for the writer who has to quickly produce at least the minimum needed for product roll-out. This brings a risk of mistakes and insufficient information. 

Best case, we’re included from the very start. You may think: “there’s no text needed at this point”, and you’re correct. The point of including us from the start is that it lets us get to know the product at a deeper level, plan our time, and gives us ample time to produce high quality deliveries that meet the deadline.

Bringing us into every phase — from initiation through testing — leads to better products, clearer communication, and fewer last‑minute scrambles.

How to include your tech writer

There are no downsides of viewing your tech writer as a natural part of every project phase:

• Initiation: In this phase, allow your tech writer to listen in and get a feel for the purpose of the project. We will get information such as time plans and goals that will help us better plan our time ahead. The rest of the team starts getting to know the writer.

• Planning: In the planning phase, your tech writer gets important information about details you may not realize are important to them. This can for example be from important interfaces such as testers, product developers, installers, and customer support. Your tech writer will start to get a deeper understanding of functionalities and can provide valuable insights about human behaviour that may not be considered this early in the project.

• Execution: Except for working on documentation, user guides, or microcopy, your tech writer can work closely with both UX/UI designers and developers to find the most user focused solutions. 

• Test: Again, include your tech writer. We will help you find any inconsistencies, as well as get a better understanding of how well our texts really work. Let us improve our texts now instead of after the product rollout.

Our advice to you 

Tech writers add the most value when we’re included from the very beginning of a project. This allows us to understand user needs deeply, and plan high‑quality documentation. Bringing us into every phase — from initiation through testing — leads to better products, clearer communication, and fewer last‑minute scrambles.

What do you see that a tech writer can do for a project except for providing technical texts?