by Peejaydee

Created on: December 28, 2006   Last Updated: May 08, 2007

So you're talking to your customer; you're just about there with the scope and the price; but are you sure you're thinking along the same lines as your customer?

A great many modern technical writing projects come unstuck for the most basic of reasons. How many times have you heard...?
- "I would have written the description differently."
- "It's just not what I expected."

- "Where are the instructions for..."
- "Why haven't you described the..."

In large technical writing projects like those for defence or aerospace platforms, project managers and technical writing specialists can spend months and even years, planning the project before a single word is written. For each project, this planning phase is undertaken not just to ensure that the writers will know what to write, but to ensure that the project is achievable in the first place; that the customer will know what is being produced for them; that they will then accept and pay for the project deliverables; to calculate what it will all cost; to schedule the work and mitigate potential risks in advance.

For the smaller scale or freelance technical writer, the situation is no different. Before taking on any project, large or small, you will need a clear statement of the requirement. This statement should articulate, unambiguously, what your customer is looking for and what he is buying from you. Some customers may not have this statement readily available: this can be for many reasons and is an opportunity for you to assist them in articulating their own requirement and gaining formal agreement.

The statement of requirements is, however, only part of the map that you are producing. This map will also need to show the scope of the work that you will be taking on.
- What will your responsibilities be? What will your customer's responsibilities be? Make a clear record of these that you and your customer agree. This avoids ambiguity in the future. Ambiguity around key responsibilities could haunt you in the future if you don't sort them out clearly at the beginning.

- What will you be delivering? These could be physical items like paper-based books or camera ready copy, or it may be electronic files. It pays to draw up a schedule of deliverables which details the physical items you will be delivering and when they will be delivered. Remember, for each publication you are to produce, you will need to specify the delivery format, the specification or standard it will be written to and an outline or synopsis of the content

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