Comment Re:Wow, this is hard. (Score 2) 430
Here's the thing: quality technical writing DOES require specialized skills. It also requires close collaboration with and cooperation from the dev team.
Having worked with a professional tech writer in the past, the process works something like this:
1. Dev team writes the software to meet the business requirements, keeping notes about which requirements are met completely, partial solutions, known bugs, etc.
2. Tech writer meets with dev team on a regular basis, developing draft documentation from dev team notes and business requirements following appropriate style guidelines.
3. At some point, a release is declared. Tech writer completes draft documentation draft for work completed for that release.
4. Dev team and tech writer reviews draft documentation together for completeness and correctness.
5. QA team implements the software in the QA environment PER THE DOCUMENTATION. -- this is the key part. If the documentation is insufficient to implement the software and/or the software does not work as documented, it is a bug.
6. Bug reports are filed against both the software and the documentation as necessary.
7. Release is ready when the software is acceptably debugged and works as documented.
Of course, this hardly ever happens anymore whether software is FOSS, commercial, or in-house, but I have see the process happen, and it is a beautiful thing when it does.