Technical Writing and Quality Assurance

Warm Up:

In small groups, discuss the following (it’s okay to google it):

Describe the responsibilities of a Technical Writer and someone in Quality Assurance? 🤓 Someone who writes technically and someone who checks for quality aren’t good answers.
What characteristics would be helpful for someone in Technical Writing? In Quality Assurance?

Technical Writing

Turing’s Believe it or Not (patent pending): You all have experience being a Technical Writer. Gasp! The responsibilities of a Technical Writer (or Documentation Engineer) vary between companies but they tend to be responsible for creating clear, concise, and user-friendly documentation that helps users and internal teams understand the complexities of the product. So, surprise surprise, you’ve done that with most of your projects in the README.

Key Responsibilities:

User Documentation: Writing user guides, installation manuals, FAQs, and API docs for external customers and developers
Internal Documentation: Creating engineering playbooks or onboarding materials for teams
Collaborating with Teams: Working closely with product managers, engineers, and designers to gather technical details and translate them into plain language
Content Optimization: Ensuring that documentation is easily searchable, well-structured, and visually appealing using tools like Markdown (you know markdown), HTML ( you know HTML too!), or specialized doc platforms
Feedback Incorporation: Collecting feedback from users or stakeholders to continuously improve content

We got a chance to speak with Turing alum Devin Beliveau 1610 on what its like being a Senior Documentation Engineer.

When asked if she has any piece of advice for people on the job hunt and looking to alternative roles she had this to say:

“Technical writing can be an excellent career path for someone who wants to be development-adjacent. Tech writing jobs can have zero code, or as much as 50% code or more. It really depends on the tools the company uses and how much control you have over your personal development. My suggestion would be that someone doesn’t just take a technical writing job if that’s not the path they actually want to be on. I think a year or more in a tech writing role will make it much harder to jump back into full time development if that’s what someone really wants. I do, however, think it can be a good path into devrel”

Alternative job titles with similar responsibilities:

Documentation Specialist
Content Designer
Developer Advocate Writer
API Doc Specialist
Technical Editor

To watch the full video with Devin and learn more about her time as a Technical Writer check out the full video below.

Quality Assurance (QA)

If words and documentation was never your thing, and you’ve been all about getting into the little details of the code and checking for bugs, QA might be the role for you. We also got to speak with Artemy Gibson (2305) whose background in biosciences prepared them to observe “tiny things” and be detail oriented. Keeping these skill sets in mind they met someone at a tech meetup where someone suggested Arty look into QA. Let’s hear from Artemy on what it’s like to be a QA Analyst.

Key Responsibilities:

Test Planning: Develop test strategies, plans, and cases based on product specifications
Manual and Automated Testing: Perform manual testing to evaluate software functionality and user experience
Bug Identification and Reporting: Detect, document, and track bugs or performance issues
Regression Testing: Verify that changes or fixes don’t introduce new issues in existing software features
Documentation: Maintain clear documentation of testing procedures, bug reports, and test results

QA Engineers help prevent costly fixes after releases, safeguards the company’s reputation, and ensures customer satisfaction through reliable and functional software. Think back to when you were all confident and excited to show your project and then the instructors were able to login as an admin and steal everyones hypothetical data! GASP AGAIN! Thats where QA comes in. Their work bridges the gap between development and end users.

Let’s Try it!

Take a look at the login credentials below. If you wanted to write test cases for a login feature so not every regular degular can login, what are some tests that you would write?

  # Dummy login method to test
  def login(username, password)
    valid_username = "bigdawg123"
    valid_password = "password123"

    if username.empty? || password.empty?
      "Error: Fields cannot be empty"
    elsif username == valid_username && password == valid_password
      "Login successful"
    else
      "Error: Invalid username or password"
    end
  end

Example Guide Outline

  require 'rspec'

  RSpec.describe "Login Feature" do
    it "logs in with valid credentials" do
      expect(login("bigdawg123", "password123")).to eq("Login successful")
    end

    it "shows error when fields are empty" do
      expect(login("", "")).to eq("Error: Fields cannot be empty")
    end

    it "shows error for invalid credentials" do
      expect(login("wrongUser", "wrongPass")).to eq("Error: Invalid username or password")
    end
  end

Alternative job titles with similar responsibilities:

Software Tester
QA Engineer
QA Specialist
Performance Engineer
Data Quality Analyst

If you want to know more about QA and Artemy’s experience watch the full video below.

Wrap up

In your notebook take some time to reflect on your experiences before Turing, the new skillset you’ve acquired, and how those can be applied to Technical Writing and QA.

Describe some similarities and differences between a traditional Software Engineering role and someone under Technical Writing? QA?
In what ways does your background fit into the these roles?
Is there alignment between these roles and your previous experience / skillset? Begin to search job postings with these titles.
What are some further questions you’d ask someone in Technical Writing or QA?

Technical Writing and Quality Assurance

Warm Up: