Working on Group Technical Writing Projects

After two months of graphical edits, I am finally nearing publication of the documents I have been hacking at since last October. At this point, all that is left is to make the documents as readable and attractive as is possible under the circumstances. The people on my team are examining each document — looking for grammar errors, spelling errors, and formatting errors.

We caught most of the errors during earlier edits, but the point of this pass is to ensure that the documents are ready for publication. The documents we are working on are not meant for the public, so they do not have to be flashy (and they aren’t) but they will be read by a key client who will be developing tools based on our product. That client must have documentation that works for them, and that means it needs to be clearly written and cleanly presented.

There are currently three of us working on the documents. Each of us lives and works in a different city. One person is a regular employee (which means she is in charge) and the other is a contractor who has some time to help get this document out. We communicate through e-mails and phone conversations. We track our project using an Excel spreadsheet that resides on out Documentum server.

Unfortunately, ours is not the only project tracked by this spreadsheet. More than once, I have spent valuable time fixing the damage done to the spreadsheet by the anonymous people who work on related projects. I cannot really blame the other people. Excel is a Microsoft product. With Microsoft, you must expect and even plan for errors.

Working with people across long distances is part of doing business these days. Both of my editing partners live in the United States, which is where I live, but I have also worked with SMEs across Asia. At other companies, I have worked with people in Germany, Ireland, Australia, Canada and Scandinavia. Sometimes the distance is smaller. This company has another division just ten miles away.

I only work with one other person who is also on site. There are four other people around who perform similar functions, but we have only a passing acquaintance. Most of the people near me are on a completely different project and work for a different business group.

One of the keys to working with people across distances, especially as a writer, is patience. In many cases, you will not get the answer you want when you want it, especially is you are separated from the other person by several time zones. The SMEs in Asia are just showing up to work as I am leaving, and I work late. You get used to asking a question and then moving on — finding other things to do until the issue is resolved.

In many cases, by the time the answer comes back, you have to check your notes just to remember what you were asking about in the first place. This can be a painful process if you do not keep good records of what you are doing. For this reason, I prefer email to voicemail. It is difficult to remember exactly what you said, but easier to bring up something you wrote. Whatever your method, always keep some sort of record of who you have requested things from, and exactly what you requested. It is also good to have a plan for how long you will wait before you ask again.

The main point to remember when working within a group that does not share a location is that the entire group is dealing with the same problems you are dealing with. While you are waiting for one person to answer a question, they are waiting on another person. Everyone is in the same boat, even if their part of the boat is in a different city or country. Sometimes you need to be proactive. You might need to set up a teleconference to hammer things out, even if it means staying three hours late or coming in three hours early. You might need to guess about an answer and come back to it later. Whatever the problem, you must find a way to do your job. That is why they pay you so much money.