Conclusion

It is likely no surprise that, given the team-based nature of most IT Departments, collaborating with others is a daily occurrence. Also, given the increasingly dispersed and remote forms of work in this field, written communication in emails, team collaboration software (MS Teams, Slack, Discord, Zoom, etc.), and documentation is such a joint daily event that it is often taken for granted. In collaborative spaces such as these, clear, concise writing is even more critical. CS professionals often write about highly complex topics in very brief sentences, often shared with many people. The opportunity for confusion and misinterpretation is very high. It is in the professional’s best interests to learn to write in these digital forms as efficiently and precisely as possible.

By now, it is also probably obvious that it is doubtful that a person would be responsible for conducting all of the research and writing of the requirements and proposal documents introduced in this chapter. The time investment to complete these processes can be short, finished in a matter of a few days, or it can take months of work by a team of people, depending on the scale of the project. In any case, these documents require the expertise of various people: IT professionals, legal, managers, accounting and finance, business analysts, marketing, administrative staff, and others. As a technical writer, you may be tasked with conducting portions of the research and parts of the writing, and then the fruits of your labor will be combined with the work of others to construct these documents.