Writing Skills and Engineers

I stumbled upon this (rather lengthy) questionnaire from 2004 on the importance of writing and general communication skills for executives. A close friend's son had requested that I fill it out for his class project. It's from my perspective as a technology executive. 19 years later, I think that it still provides some useful advice.

Caveat; somewhere in this document, possibly in multiple locations, there are errors. While I strive for perfection, I frequently fail.

1. What percentage of your time is spent writing, editing, or presenting?

It varies from week to week. But if email is included, I would say around 65%.

2. What types of writing, editing, and presenting do you do?

Excluding email, I have to write specifications, budgets, reports about possible acquisitions, and also reports to help the marketing department understand the technical differences between our products and those of our competitors. I also have to write and communicate employee evaluations. There are presentations to our Professional Services and Sales teams as well. Most software engineers are required to help the technical writers, usually writing a small document that explains the operation of a particular feature that is then used as the basis for a thorough treatment.

3. Who are your audiences and what are their needs?

Employees; they need a clear understanding of the product direction, a clear technical view of our approach, and an idea of the company's direction and how a product fits our strategy. On a one-to-one basis, I need to communicate with them about their job performance, i.e. what they are doing well and what can be improved.

Other executives in the company; I have to translate technical implementations into user features so that Product Managers understand the impact on our product strategy and customers. When I make a decision with a large financial or strategic impact, I sometimes need to write a report detailing my reasoning in preparation for meetings with executive management (CEO, CTO, CFO).

For Professional Services we need to communicate best practices for the installation, tuning, and extension of our products.

For Product Strategy we need to present our views of how features or the timing of releases will be received by the marketplace.

Large customers sometimes require direct contact with engineering management to help them solve a problem or to collaborate on a future version of a product.

4. What things do your audiences expect from your documents or presentations?

When the audience does not consist of engineers and architects, a successful presentation will give a thorough overview of a product’s features but will only detail technology with an eye towards what is accomplished (for example performance improvements) rather than delving into obscure implementation details. When detailing designs for software engineers, just the opposite is true. I will give an overview of what we are trying to accomplish from a product standpoint, and then go into great detail regarding the architecture for each facet of the implementation.

5. What are your biggest writing related challenges on the job?

Making non-technical people understand the benefits of a particular approach without initiating a seminar on computer science. Ultimately, no matter how hard they try; most non-technical people cannot understand detailed implementation details. But if one can communicate the impact from the perspective of performance, features, and usability, you've accomplished your goal.

6. What about deadlines? How do they influence the way that you write on the job?

The target audience is more important than the deadline. An informal document that is "just the facts" will suffice for peer-to-peer or supervisor to direct report communication. However, if the audience is the executive board or a group that is given a detailed presentation then there is usually an expectation that a well-formatted and well-organized document wlil be provided as a reference. Deadlines are pretty much meaningless as one has to find the time to communicate clearly, so good writing skills are critical and allow one to do (at least) a passable job in a short time frame, frequently late at night.

7. What brainstorming, organizing, and writing techniques, if any, do you recommend for profession-related writing?

I tend to start with broad headings in an outline form. I start by writing general ideas under the headings. As I expand on the document and do my research, I tend to find that I need to split sections out into more headings. I also find natural groupings that can then become a section under a broader heading. Then I organize the document from beginning to end. By the time I have completed most of the content, a table of contents emerges. Then I review the table of contents and make final organizational changes. The same basic technique works for organizing slides in a presentation.

8. Many traditional English courses focus on writing essays. What value, if any, do you see in learning how to write essays? What do you think they help people do?

They help people to express themselves in a clear and easy to understand fashion. Unfortunately, many technical people write in short technical phrases and sentence fragments. There isn't any reason that a document needs to be dry and difficult to read, regardless of the subject matter.

9. What would you like to see taught in college-level English and Communications classes? What are the things you think people need to know? What are the skills you think people need to have?

Many highly intelligent people that I communicate with have poor grammar and spelling skills. My immediate reaction to a sloppy document is that either the author lacks good communication skills or has sloppy work habits. I will usually discard resumes with multiple writing or spelling errors, because I believe that it shows a lack of attention to care and detail (hardly an original thought). Word processors have spelling and grammar correcting features and thus should detect the majority of errors.

10. What are the benefits of good communications skills? What are the dangers of poor communication skills? Overall, how important are communication skills (writing, speaking, interpersonal, etc.) in this line of work?

Many times, written communication is a person’s first exposure to you. Superior writing skills convey that you are competent and professional.

Well-written documents save time. I see enormous amounts of time wasted by long email exchanges and long distance phone calls because the original missive was unorganized, difficult to understand, or because important details were omitted.

11. Can you give me any examples of what you consider “good” or “bad” communications, or "miscommunication" (i.e., something that could have worked but did not because the writer did not take all the factors, like the audience, into account)? What was the document or presentation like and what happened because of it?

The two most common forms of miscommunication are:

• The writer neglects to provide context. For example; two individuals will have a verbal discussion or a private correspondence. At some point they realize that they need to include a third party. But they neglect to provide the original context of the conversation, the background of the issue, or the problem that initiated the discussion in the first place. There was a situation where a Product Manager had a discussion with her supervisor. In the context of the discussion, the two of them decided to drastically change a major feature of a product, in the process coining some new phrases. They sent an email to the VP of Engineering and the Development Manager without explaining how or why the discussion started, without defining the new phraseology, and without giving any history of the preceding discussions. The Development group was on a short time schedule, but by the time all the parties were on the same page, 3 days had passed.
• The flip side of the coin is when more information is provided than is necessary to quickly resolve a problem. Our company has multiple development groups in different parts of the world and everyone works long hours. One challenge that I have had to deal with repeatedly is when an engineer in one group needs to ask a question of an engineer in another group. The first engineer tends to describe the entire product when it would suffice to ask a simple technical question. This is a case where context is frequently not required. As an example, a developer in Boston sent an email to a developer in Sydney, Australia. The email was exquisitely detailed, providing an overview of the product, a description of the section that the Boston developer was working on, the specific feature in question, and finally a simple question about an API call. The document was a page and a half long. Predictably, the developer in Sydney critiqued every part of the product design, instructed the Boston developer as to how the feature should be implemented, and neglected to answer the question about the API call. The time difference between Boston and Sydney is 14 hours. Since each developer would send an email and would not get a response until the next day, it took 4 days to resolve the issue. The question was finally answered via a short late night phone call.

12. What advice do you have for students?

For students in a technical field, there is a strong temptation to consider the “soft” subjects unimportant. This is a serious mistake. Putting aside that every management position requires superior communications skills, an engineer that can communicate ideas clearly and concisely will always be more productive and more highly valued than one who cannot. Good communications skills, specifically good writing skills, serve a person from their first day in school through their entire career. A well-written resume is their entrée to an interview. Good writing skills reflect an organized thought process and will smooth the way towards a management position (if desired) or ease the path through a technical career path. It's difficult to imagine a successful executive who cannot clearly provide direction to his or her direct reports. It is equally difficult to imagine a software architect who cannot clearly communicate his or her ideas to others. In short, communication skills are as essential as technical skills.