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Tips on How to Get Most Out of your SMEs

Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 02/21/2012 - 18:06
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Working with subject matter experts (SMEs) is an on-going challenge for any technical writer. SMEs could be a business analyst, program manager, developer or designer. Usually SMEs give a first-hand experience of the product or application. So you love it or hate it; SME is an inevitable point of contact for information gathering.

You might come across many types of SMEs. Some could be extremely temperamental while some are easy going. Yes, there is one more category, absentee SME. Any time you try to reach them, they are either busy or non-reachable. Even the easy going SMEs could be equally dangerous as they don’t give a heed on what you say and agree to everything. But no matter how tough is your SME, extracting information is part of a technical writer’s job profile and you ought to be very good at it.

Following are few suggestions which usually work well for me.

  • Sending your queries through Email is passé. SMEs are usually busy; so there is a very slim chance to get timely response from them. Hence it’s better to make a direct approach. Go to their cubicles for a face-to-face discussion.
  • It’s not unusual to find your SMEs not turning up for discussion even after accepting your meeting invite. To avoid such situation, do send reminders of your meetings. It’s ideal to send reminders one day or one hour before the scheduled meeting.
  • Do your homework before interviewing the SMEs. It’s better to prepare a set of questionnaire which you can ask during the discussion.
  • Remember, it pays to build up rapport with your SMEs. An offline chit-chat near the cafeteria is a not a bad idea. Try talking on common interest topics. You never know, these offline discussions might help in building camaraderie with your SME.
  • While sending your documents for review, don’t forget to set a timeline for the review process. If the SME doesn’t turn up, you can send reminders to make him review the document in time.
  • Finally, if your organization follows agile methodology, you can always bring up constraints related to information gathering or document reviews during the Scrum meetings. Your Scrum Master will try to ensure you get all the co-operation from your SMEs.

    • Got any better idea on how to handle SMEs? Please do share it with us.

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    Hi, Info gathering is an

    Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon, 03/05/2012 - 12:14.

    Hi,

    Info gathering is an important part of any tech writing job. In some cases, the tech writer has to deal with more than one SME per product. The reason is that these guys divide their responsibilities based on the client and server side configurations. So, now, as a tech writer, either you are preparing a product PPT or writing a document that covers the entire functionality of the product, you must interact with all the SMEs involved.

    In this kind of scenario, as a tech writer, you face a lot of coordination issues with these SMEs; particularly, if these guys do not share good relationships with each other. You will end up chasing all the guys but getting nothing out of them. Again, the reason here is that these guys do not want to share the info and they try to skip the meeting as frequently as they can which in turn leaves your documentation and its related schedule in doldrums.

    Working as a tech writer becomes really tough when you are dealing with some complex product documentation and most of your SMEs are hard nuts to crack. After undergoing different kinds of experiences with these SMEs, what I found is that tech writing job needs multi-level terrific communication skills with outsmarting body language.

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    i agree

    Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 06/19/2012 - 16:49.

    hi,

    Handling a SME can be a very tricky thing. Sometimes even the SME may not be aware of the profile of technical writer. Then again you have to explain your profile and tell him the importance of documentation. I have faced a scenario, when the SME didnt know that he/she has to review the documents.

    Frankly, the term 'Technical' writer is misleading. These SMEs expect you to know software development too.

    Let me sum it up by saying that documentation constitute a very small part of job,it is the communication and handling skills that matters.

    Regards

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