Technical writers are valuable as they create new knowledge for the company. If your company is building software products, technical writers are involved in the software documentation, UX microcopy, and troubleshooting guides. If your company is building hardware products, technical writers are involved in technical documentation and compliance documentation. If your company is a service provider, technical writers write user manuals, standard operating procedures, service documentation, etc. Where do technical writers fit in the whole organizational structure? To whom should they ideally report to? More importantly, what are the roles and responsibilities of the team in terms of adding business value to the company?
The team that technical writers end up with matters as it affects how companies view technical writers. It also affects how technical writers can access resources, technology tools, and the governance process to influence key decisions in the company
Technical Writer in SaaS Product Company
Technical writers usually report to the Director, Product Manager, or Chief Product Officer via their manager. This helps technical writers collaborate more closely with developers, product managers, the QA team, and UX designers. This would aid in producing more comprehensive documentation on product features, how-to tutorials, and release notes. Working closely with developers helps technical writers understand the product feature functionality better to make more accurate documentation. Having product managers, technical writers, and UX designers report to the Director, Product Management or Chief Product Officer is advisable to have a good functioning documentation team.
Some SaaS product companies have instances where technical writers report to customer support managers/directors. Technical writers usually collaborate heavily with support agents, leading to a high volume of troubleshooting guides and amending existing articles with new content. This structure is highly beneficial for companies where the volume of support tickets is large and technical writers’ Key Performance Indicators are to increase the self-service rate.
There are a few instances where technical writers report to the Marketing manager focusing on building documentation to generate traffic. Others are more focused on SEO-related practices to generate leads/prospects through software documentation.
Nevertheless, technical writers generate immense value in creating new knowledge for SaaS products. Given the nature of SaaS products where frequent releases are required, technical writers have to be agile to produce good quality documentation in a limited time!
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