GREAT BIG ENGINEERING ORG; itty bitty docs team¶
Description
In a 2019 interview, documentation veteran Pavi Sandhu cited a very reasonable 10:1 as the ideal ratio of software developers to technical writers, positing that a writer can support two scrum teams. However, in case you were wondering why you feel busy at work, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor and Statistics, in 2021 there were 30 software developers for every 1 technical writer.
I work at a software company where the developer-to-writer ratio is, conservatively, 200:1. But this is not a talk about the ideal developer-to-writer ratio. It’s not a talk about convincing your org to hire more writers. It’s not even really a talk about how to grow the team.
This talk is about how my docs team survives, nay, thrives in an organization where we are ridiculously outnumbered. It’s about a culmination of good choices we made (and continue to make) based on leaning into the huge ratio rather than fighting it.
It’s exhilarating to be part of an incredibly productive docs team! I’ll talk about how we designed our roles, processes, infrastructure, and deliverables to optimize for the needs of a large (and growing) product and engineering organization. Even if your docs team isn’t quite as outnumbered, come hear about strategies that can make your docs team more focused and capable:
- Implementing extreme docs-as-code and minimizing maintenance overhead.
- Providing focus for writers.
- Defining and sticking to service-level agreements that go both directions.
- Fostering a “docs matter” mindset with product managers.
- Building a strong, resilient team, and what that looks like.
- Conference: Write the Docs Portland
- Year: 2023
