atw: Re: Dealing with SMEs?
- From: Ana Young <ana_young2000@xxxxxxxxx>
- To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:44:28 -0700 (PDT)
In my experience, they are not being hostile - they are busy and they have
(usually) fairly tight deadlines. I am not saying you do not have them either,
but you have to understand their position. Also, I doubt that their bosses will
be understanding if they excuse their missed deadlines because they had to talk
to you - these are some of the facts of the life of a technical communicator.
It takes time to make SMEs understand that your job adds value to their product
and, hopefully, that time will come. In the meantime, do make appointments,
diagrams, anything that makes SMEs realise that you have done a lot of leg work
and you really do not want to be a pain and a waste of their time.
Cheers,
Ana
--- On Tue, 10/3/09, j.sids <sids.515@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> From: j.sids <sids.515@xxxxxxxxx>
> Subject: atw: Dealing with SMEs?
> To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Received: Tuesday, 10 March, 2009, 2:12 AM
> Hi there, I'm a relatively junior writer (been in the
> job for 6
> months!) and would like to ask the more experienced writers
> out there
> - how do you deal with SMEs and new information?
>
> My problem is, the content I'm given to write is very
> new and complex
> to me, so I have to ask them a lot of questions just so I
> understand
> things. A few times now, I get the feeling that they get
> frustrated at
> me, or think that I'm dumb because I keep asking them
> to clarify or
> repeat points. I'm not sure if there is a delicate way
> of handling
> situations like this, or good way of dealing with new
> information. I
> tend to keep asking them questions (back and forth) and
> then I get the
> feeling that they're getting hostile, possibly out of
> frustration.
> What is your advice for dealing with new, complex
> information when
> dealing with SMes?
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