Technical Writing Process: The simple, five-step guide that anyone can use to create technical documents such as user guides, manuals, and procedures

by Kieran Morgan, Ali McCart (Editor), Sanja Spajic (Illustrator)

The Technical Writing Process is a simple, five-step process that can be used to create almost any piece of technical documentation such as a user guide, manual or procedure. It's suitable for a wide range of aspiring technical writers and students of technical writing, non-writers who find themselves assigned with the task of creating technical documentation, established writers who want to bring more structure to their work, and anyone managing a documentation project.

Genres: Writing, Technology, Nonfiction

273 pages, Kindle Edition

First published March 4, 2015

Reviews

[Yoly · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was exactly what I was looking for.

[Nat · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great, short book. Kieran's approach is simply stated, easy to apply, and you can tweak it to fit your own needs or the particulars of your own writing projects. It's a useful book which, having read cover to cover, I now use as a reference.
My only gripe is you can read this book and come away with the false notion that Kieran invented the concept single-handedly. Indeed, in the introduction he states that existing models of the technical writing process were under-developed so he worked this out in the space of two weeks based on his own experience (!) The author might not realize that his work is based on an extensive body of knowledge which was pioneered by the likes of Sandra Pakin - author of Documentation Development Methodology (1984) and JoAnn Hackos - who wrote many books on content management and information development, and was the president of the Society for Technical Communication for many years. (A couple of references wouldn't have hurt).

[Richárd Ötvös · Rating 4 out of 5]

I picked up this book because I work as an engineering manager, and I wanted to pick up some ideas about how to improve my team's documentation process. I picked up around 3-5 good ideas, that I might implement from this.
When reading this with that concrete goal in mind, some parts of the book were not super useful, but to its credit, this is really easy to read.


If you're completely new to technical writing this is an okay book. It talks less about style itself but gives you a concrete process, and delves into some basic project and stakeholder management topics, which again might be useful for beginners. I imagine this would be a good fit if you learned some technical doc writing, but never worked at a big company before.

[Sheilly Núñez · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this book for my PHD research, since Kieran explains a 5 step process he design for technical writing, that combines the regular "well known" 3 step process of the general written composition with the PMBOK methodology. I'm totally satisfy with this approach.

Recommended to people that write multiple technical documents for work or business.

[Rachel Pasche · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book takes an incredibly long time to convey some relatively simple points

[Katie Karnehm-Esh · Rating 4 out of 5]

It does the job, and in Australian English. I am using it for a class this semester and hope my students find it useful.

[Zahra · Rating 3 out of 5]

A good reference

[Heba · Rating 5 out of 5]

Concise and well-organized, and very informative.

[Matthew · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not bad. A good overview of the steps involved in technical writing.

[Miguel Espinoza · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pretty clear structured

The author provides a clear path for creating documentation by establishing steps and providing some examples about how achieving it.

[Sarah Puinno · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book that details each step of the technical writing process. Easily digestible material for beginners that is deeper than surface level. Templates are provided for use in each step.

[Brandi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great introduction to the technical writing process for beginners or experienced professionals planning to lead the process.

[Ramon Al-Amin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Decent book on the subject for anyone brand new to technical writing as it delivers the basics but for anyone else its a waste of time.

[Jessica · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does a good job of showing the technical writing process.