SMEs are an integral part of our day-to-day jobs. They are our main source of information, apart from the System Requirement Documents, Product Requirement Document, Design document, and other innumerable sources available to us, for providing technically accurate documents.
Oftentimes, the technical documents available are filled with jargon or written in very colloquial language, which is difficult for the end user to decipher. This is where we come to rescue and form a bridge between SMEs and end users.
I have been working as a Technical writer for the past 18 yrs and have worked with different types of SMEs and different work cultures. And most often, I have felt SMEs are not very supportive, and it becomes difficult to collect inputs from them.
Here are some of the tips that I would like to provide to help gather information from SMEs:
- Always keep a draft ready from the available resources before approaching the SME. Do your homework from the resources available, such as the Design document, etc. I have noticed that people are more enthusiastic to correct your mistake than to provide content from scratch.
- Collate all the questions and set up a face-to-face meeting to discuss them.
- Get access to the WebUI and try to run the procedures on your own, and then come up with the procedure before asking the SME/tester to provide your the inputs. Be more involved and try to suggest some changes to the GUI look and feel, and provide improvements when possible.
- Participate in weekly/daily stand-ups to get a better understanding of the features developed in the current release.
These were some of my understandings based on my experience and time-tested.
Please let me know in the comments if you have any more suggestions.
Visit Rahul Karn’s YouTube for more learning about Technical Writers – https://www.youtube.com@techwritingcourse
