This is written with an audience of producers of software products/services in mind. Please do not claim that your documentation, used to introduce a new user/developer, is good enough to make the user/consumer (developer) proficient in your technology. Producers of software products [the developers, and organizations] are great at writing references to their products, however they generally are horrible at introducing new users to their product. When quick start guides, or introduction tutorials are written for products, the documentation tends to remain in the domain that the creators made. Solution: Hire a reputable technology writer. This will help you in a few ways:

  1. Gets a credible authority figure giving approval and backing to your technology

  2. Loses a creator bias

  3. The writer, like your audience, has an outside knowledge of other technologies

  4. They should not be influenced by the creators to write things that lack value to your actual users. (This assumes that sales and management cannot affect the contracted author’s work.)

  5. The users will understand the product better, and thus reduce undesirable support calls/emails.

  6. You will have professional documentation. The technical writer’s domain is to create attractive and easily consumable books, the software producer’s domain is not the same.

  7. From a business sense, the author is not a full time employee; they would remain as a short-term contract. Insulation from actual production is a good thing. This also helps the author as that it stabilizes their income streams.

  8. The documentation is written from a potential customer’s perspective

  9. It gives quick feedback on how easy the system, language, or product is to use, setup, troubleshoot, and possibly maintain.

Given these points, it would be easy to justify even a luxurious price on producing high quality introductions / non-referential documentation for your products. Based on these reasons, I conclude it would benefit the business professionals, developers, testers of the product, users, and the marketing department by separating the author him/herself from the general stress of the entire producing company. ** **