Many Subject Matter Experts, or SME’s, do not know how valuable they are. Often, they just “do”, while others see them as elite intellects. (We cannot say geek here).
Getting an SME to patiently explain “how” and “why” is an art. That’s where a competent interviewer comes in. An SME is often overloaded. Sometimes cooperation means only that some interviewer has just given them a new job description. It wasn’t on their plate yesterday, and now they have to do this too.
Well written technical communcations are often surprisingly simple. True, the audience may be quite sophisticated, but the goal remains the same for all documentation: SERVE the reader’s needs.
Left to their own devices, a manual user will find what they need, if the manual is clearly organized for reference. A work instruction must generally be a precision document, anticipating….full text. Or to download…..
Being able to communicate on many different levels, with any kind of colleague, is a crtical component of the technical writer’s skill set. Knowledge of subject, obtained on the fly from any source almost all at once, still requires help for the writer to outline, sort and organize this information and knowledge.
Interviews with people on vastly different organizational levels is not always as easy as it appears. Sometimes…full text or downoad to print.