Intern program to rewrite legacy UI and API documentation
2023
Context
In 2023, we began our Technical Communications internship program. I spearheaded the program: interviewing and selecting candidates, building out their training and onboarding, and leading their projects for the 3 months they were at TraceLink.
The quality project
I decided to give them what we call “quality” projects–taking older documentation and bringing it up to our current documentation styles and standards, while at the same time rewriting for conciseness and clarity as well as verifying technical accuracy and adding more user-centered context.
This type of project served multiple purposes. The 3 interns were able to walk away with complete, published projects to add to their portfolio, and some of our older but frequently used documentation was significantly improved. The interns also had a chance to gain experience writing for both the UI and APIs while they learned what it was like to work at a software company.
Training
Over the course of 3 months, I conducted one training per week about technical writing in general and 1-2 workshops where we focused on revising specific types of content together (e.g. introductory paragraphs, results sentences, steps, element descriptions). I began by reviewing all of their writing myself, and when I felt they understood our styles and standards, they began peer reviewing each other’s work before sending it to me for editorials.
Results
It was incredibly gratifying to watch them come in with very little (in some cases absolutely none) technical writing experience and leave understanding the majority of what we do. We had fantastic feedback from internal SMEs as well as the interns on the success of the project. Our internal SMEs loved working with the interns and were impressed by the end result, and the interns felt they learned a lot and walked away with a solid portfolio piece. In total, the interns wrote 43 procedures and documented 23 APIs, including all associated conceptual content.
Skills
leadership, mentoring, training, project management, UI writing, API writing, reviewing and providing feedback in a constructive manner
Tools
MadCap Flare, Confluence, Jira, Git, SouceTree, Excel