Professional Documentation Solutions Tailored to Your Needs
As an R&D, Product, or Program manager, you know your product isn’t complete without clear, professional documentation. But you don’t always have the bandwidth, staff, or in-house expertise to make it happen.
JBS Technical Writing provides high-quality documentation on a project basis—leveraging deep technical expertise to explain your technology clearly, fill short-term gaps, and remain available when you need us.
How We Work With You
Discovery & Planning
Before any writing begins, we work directly with you to assess your needs and plan the approach. This upfront assessment ensures we address the actual challenge you’re facing and deliver documentation that achieves its goal.
Key questions we’ll explore with you:
- What content is needed and why?
- Who is the audience?
- What’s the optimal timing for this documentation?
- Does the knowledge already exist within your organization?
- Who are the SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) and how available are they?
- What other resources are available?
This assessment enables risk identification upfront, determines workflow based on your time constraints, and ensures delivery of a professional product on schedule.
Getting Started
Initial contact — We start with a phone call. You explain what documentation you need, and we discuss your requirements.
Information gathering — You send any existing materials: specs, technical documents, older versions needing updates, presentations, or internal drafts. (We sign an NDA if necessary.) This often allows us to provide a ballpark price and schedule.
Deep dive meeting — We gather additional information through product demos, meetings with your team, whiteboard sessions, or hands-on exploration of your system.
Proposal — We send a written proposal detailing scope of work, pricing, and terms.
During the Project
Learning your system — Depending on complexity, this can range from a two-hour overview to several days of immersion. We review your system, discuss users and use cases, and familiarize ourselves with your technology.
Writing and iteration — Based on the agreed outline, we develop content, create diagrams, and document questions as they arise. We identify issues early (missing features, outline adjustments) and keep you informed.
Staged reviews — We submit partial drafts to keep the project moving while your busy SMEs review material and provide feedback.
Refinement — We incorporate feedback and address outstanding questions, scheduling follow-up meetings as needed.
Timeline
Project timelines vary based on scope and complexity. A typical project spans about two months, though shorter projects may take one to two weeks, and complex engagements can extend over longer periods.
After Project Completion
We maintain continuity. Having already completed the learning curve, we’re available for:
- Quick consultations on how to explain features or concepts
- Help with client-facing emails or brief content sections
- Strategic discussions about your roadmap and future documentation needs
Project vs. Outsourcing
Project-based work — We work from our location, managing defined deliverables with clear scope and timelines.
Outsourcing — A technical writer works on-site at your company on an ongoing basis.
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How do we get started (before we have an agreement in place)?
We start with a phone call. You explain to us what technical documentation you need and we chat.
The next step is for you to send us any existing, written input, such as specs or other technical documents, older versions of documents you need updated, presentations, drafts you wrote internally, etc. (if necessary, we sign an NDA at this point). At this point we might be able to give you a ballpark price and schedule for your project. If the parameters make sense, then we schedule a meeting.
At the meeting we gather more information. This can be by seeing a demo, meeting members of your staff, brainstorming together at your whiteboard, etc.
We send a written, proposal detailing the scope of work, the pricing and the terms.
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How does JBS work during the project itself?
We start to learn your system. The way we gather information during the project itself can vary greatly depending on the scenario and can look like any of these:
- Your team gives us an overview of the system we are documenting and discuss the various users and Use Cases. This could be any where from two hours to a few days, depending on the complexity of the system.
- You give us access to a system and we “play with it” and become familiar with it.
- You give us background material to read.
We write! Based on the detailed outline that was agreed during the pre-project phase we start writing content, drawing diagrams and taking notes as questions arise.
As we work we identify issues (like features not being available or changes required in the outline) and update you.
We submit partial drafts for review (we try to pace the work so we can keep progressing while your busy SMEs review the material) and you send us written feedback.
If necessary, we meet again (maybe by Skype this time) and discuss the feedback and raise any issues we have for completing the document.
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How long does all this take?
Again this varies greatly depending on the project. An average project takes place over about two months, really short projects can be just a week or two and some projects last for years.
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What happens when the project is done?
- We keep in touch and — we’ve already gone through the learning curve — are available for consultations when you need us. You can call to ask a question about how to explain something to a client, or ask for help with an email or a paragraph or two of content.
- You invite us for a cup of coffee to discuss your roadmap and brainstorm about the best way to approach the next project
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So what's the difference between a "project" and "outsourcing"?
Outsourcing is when our technical writer works on-site at your company on an ongoing basis. Everything else is a project.
