The majority of developers and their managers have absolutely no idea what technical writers do. Most developers think of us as old-school secretaries (administrative assistants) who correct their typographical errors and handle their typing. If you are a developer who knows better, please educate your peers rather than sending me a note with the message “not all developers.”

Developers frequently work with time pressure. They have limited time to code and debug a feature. Why should technical writers not have the same stresses?

Here’s where the difference is: Developers are treated like military pilots. You will be asked to get in the air rapidly. But you’ll still be given a runway so that your aircraft can take off.

Too many developers provide technical writers with absolutely no runway. We are not helicopters. If you tell us the day before you release a feature that it needs documentation (yes, this has actually happened), then you’ve deprived us of any runway. And what’s worse, developers and their managers complain that we need a runway.

Involve your technical writers early. Very early. If you are having a design discussion, then your technical writers will benefit from hearing it. If you prefer to wait until after the design discussion to involve your technical writers, that’s probably okay as long as you do it immediately after the design discussion, and not the week after.

We need a lot of information in order to write. Everything you tell us isn’t going to end up in the documentation, but we still need to know it.

We’re all airplanes: developers, quality assurance engineers, and technical writers. Please treat us like airplanes. Not like helicopters. We too need runways.