Is Tech Writer a Tester, and Vice Versa, Is Tester a Tech Writer?

Sketchnote

Sketchnote

Description

As a person who worked both as a software tester and a technical writer, I can say that to be either a good software tester or a good tech writer, you need to be both. Tech writing presupposes you have enough technical knowledge to understand a topic and succinctly describe it to your audience. Most companies in which tech writers work actually want their own software products described in such a way that the content is easily understandable. And to get to that point, a tech writer needs to understand the product in-depth. What better way than to test it/use it by themselves as a user would? At the other side of the writing spectrum is the tester. The person who needs to make sure everything software engineers programmed works as planned. And in most cases, make sure that whoever comes after them, knows what steps to take to ensure that the new software release didn't break a legacy feature (why good regression tests exist). A well-written test script will ensure that doesn't happen. This talk will discuss the following:

  • Where do tech writing and software testing overlap?
  • Can you switch from one career to the other?
  • Why do we love developers?
  • Conference: Write the Docs Portland
  • Year: 2021

About the speaker

Ines Stefanovic