A requirements engineer’s core output is documentation that guides the development process. If that documentation is poorly written, even the most brilliant elicitation and analysis will fail to yield successful results. Therefore, strong technical writing skills are not just beneficial for a requirements engineer; they are absolutely essential to their effectiveness and to the success of the projects they work on.
Technical writing skills are fundamental to requirements engineers since they especially help with the following:
- Clarity and unambiguity: The core job of a requirements engineer is to translate stakeholder needs into precise, actionable requirements. Ambiguity in requirements is a leading cause of project failure, rework, and budget overruns.
- Audience awareness: Requirements documents are read by a diverse audience: business stakeholders (who need simple, high-level language), developers (who need technical detail), testers (who need verifiable criteria), and project managers (who need scope and dependencies). A good technical writer knows how to tailor the level of detail, jargon, and presentation to the specific audience, which is a critical skill for requirements engineers creating various artifacts (e.g., high-level business requirements vs. detailed functional specifications).
- Conciseness and precision: Requirements should be succinct and to the point. Redundancy or excessive verbosity can obscure the actual requirement and make documents difficult to read and maintain. Technical writing focuses on conveying maximum information with minimum words, using specific vocabulary and avoiding unnecessary fluff.
- Structure and organization: Requirements often involve complex systems and numerous interdependencies. Well-structured documents (using headings, bullet points, tables, diagrams, and consistent numbering) are much easier to navigate, understand, and maintain. Technical writers are experts in organizing complex information logically and accessibly.
- Verifiability and testability: Good technical writing ensures that requirements are measurable and testable. Phrases like „the system shall be fast“ are ambiguous. A technical writer would refine this to „the system shall respond to user queries within 2 seconds for 95% of requests.“ This precision directly supports the creation of effective test cases.
- Reduced rework and costs: Poorly written requirements lead to misunderstandings, leading to developers building the wrong thing, which then requires costly rework. Clear, well-written requirements, informed by strong technical writing, significantly reduce these downstream issues.
- Maintaining consistency: In large projects, maintaining consistent terminology, phrasing, and style across numerous requirements documents is essential. Technical writing principles, including the use of glossaries and style guides, are vital here.
Requirements engineers and business analysts should be very good at technical writing as this skill helps with many challenges in their field of work. However, this does not automatically make a technical writer a requirements engineer as there is more to this role than „just“ writing documentation.
Curious to learn more? Here are some resources to start your journey into technical writing:
- Technical Writing course at Google: https://developers.google.com/tech-writing/overview
- Google Developer Documentation Style Guide: https://developers.google.com/style
- Microsoft Writing Style Guide: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/style-guide/welcome/
- Apple Style Guide: https://support.apple.com/guide/applestyleguide/welcome/web
Image by Andreas Lischka from Pixabay
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