Hiring a technical writing
consultant to produce the manual and help system for your computer software can have
definite advantages that improve your overall product.
Consider these benefits.
A
consultant can bring a new perspective to your product.
Often the familiarity of something causes us to become blind to its faults. An outside
consultant can look at your software with a new perspective, as if he or she was the
end-user just taking your software out of its box. When the consultant works with your
software, he or she can find inconsistencies that you may have otherwise missed.
A
consultant can be less costly than a software engineer.
Consultant fees are often less than what you pay to your software engineer for wages and
benefits. Hiring a consultant makes good economic sense and leaves your software engineer
free to program.
A
consultant can test your software on an outside system.
Many consultants will use the computer hardware in their own office to run your software
while they are creating your documentation. If they do, they may be able to test your
software's compatibility with their system and provide you with bugs that they encounter.
You
don't have to purchase the software used to create your documentation.
Many consultants will have all the software that they need to create your documentation
because they do they same type of work for many clients. In many cases, you won't need to
buy any software unless you want them to use a special package.
You
don't have to learn how to do it.
Hiring a consultant means that you don't have to learn to deal with file
management, graphics, help compilers, or indexing.
