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> What about technical writers who *write* specifications? I know of at
least
> one person who does that (a former colleague). Does one need intimate
> knowledge of programming languages to perform that job? I do not qualify
for
> most of the jobs I'm seeing advertised currently, but I'm wondering if
> writing specs might be something I could do.
There's specs and there's specs.
Writing functional specs for a business system generally
does not require detailed programming knowledge. It
does require detailed knowledge of the needs of the
business. Technical writers are often employed to
help the business analysts produce a complete, accurate,
usable set of functional specs.
Writing technical design specifications is something
else. Here, a detailed knowledge of the tools to be
used is important, though it is often supplied not by the
writer/editor but by other members of the development
team.
The needs vary from case to case. Where a team
of developers is designing and building a system that
is to be handed over to the customer for future
operation and maintenance, the specifications need
to be completed to a higher degree of accuracy and
usability than in cases where the development is all
"in-house". So in the former case, the vendor would
be wise to employ technical writers to package the
specifications. In the latter case, the attitude might be
"who cares about the specs"?
--
Michael West
Melbourne, Australia
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