Tag: disaster recovery

Don’t Overlook the Technical Author: A Question for Project Managers

Project managers often bring technical authors in too late. Experienced technical authors can reduce delivery risk by shaping documentation early—supporting IT audits, ITIL-aligned processes, ISO 27001/ISO 9001 controls, disaster recovery packs, incident and change management, and operations manuals. Know your technical author before you assume their limits.

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Here is a question for project managers:

How many projects did you manage where the team treated the technical author as an afterthought or excluded them entirely?

It happens more often than it should. Project managers view documentation as something to “do at the end”, once the teams finish the proper work and the delivery pressure is at its peak.

That is when teams discover the cost of leaving documentation too late.

By the time the project is in closure mode, you have already missed the point where a technical author adds the most value.

The mistake: assuming the technical author is “just a writer”

Many project managers underestimate what an experienced technical author actually does. They think we:

      • only polish text,
      • rewrite technical material in plain English,
      • only fix formatting.

That is only one part of the job.

Technical authors understand IT operations and governance. They have documented services for years. This experience extends to audits. They know how to gather evidence.

What an experienced technical author may already know

A technical author may already have delivered documentation for:

      • IT audits and compliance preparation
      • Disaster recovery (DR) documentation
      • Operations manuals and runbooks
      • Incident, problem, and change management processes
      • Service transition documentation
      • Knowledge base and repository design
      • Information governance and document control
      • Data centre migration documentation
      • ITIL-aligned documentation structures
      • ISO 27001 and ISO 9001 aligned document frameworks

These are not theoretical skills. They come from being repeatedly embedded in delivery and operational environments across different organisations and clients.

The risk: documentation gaps that become delivery risks

When you exclude technical authors from early planning, projects often run into the same problems:

      • They discovered the documentation gaps late.
      • Missing operational detail that prevents handover
      • Inconsistent terminology and process steps
      • Rework caused by unclear ownership and review routes
      • Poorly structured repositories that no one can navigate
      • Evidence gaps that become audit risks
      • Last-minute “document sprints” that no one has time for

These issues are rarely “writing problems” but planning problems which are avoidable.

Know your technical author before you assume their limits

Every technical author has a unique history. Some come from engineering, some from software and infrastructure, some from compliance-heavy environments, and some from service operations.

You will not know what capabilities you have access to unless you ask.

Here is a simple, early-project habit that saves pain later:

Sit down with the technical author and establish what they’ve done before.

Ask questions like:

      • What types of projects have you supported?
      • What frameworks do you work with (ITIL, ISO 27001, ISO 9001)?
      • What operational documentation have you delivered (DR packs, ops manuals, runbooks)?
      • What documentation risks do you expect on a project like this?
      • What do you need from the team to avoid last-minute document chaos?
      • You may find they know more about documentation governance, operational readiness, and audit evidence than you expected.

Documentation is not an output. It is part of the delivery.

Documentation is not a box to tick at the end.

It is part of how projects:

      • reduce operational risk
      • pass audits
      • transfer knowledge
      • support teams
      • enable safe change
      • transition into BAU without firefighting

A technical author is not “just the person who writes things down”.

A strong technical author is often one of the few people on a project who thinks in terms of:

      • structure
      • lifecycle
      • traceability
      • usability
      • governance
      • evidence

Last point: never overlook the technical author

If you want better delivery outcomes, involve documentation earlier and treat it as a work stream with ownership and design—not a clean-up job.

Never overlook the technical writer.

Because the best technical authors are not just documenting your project.

They can make it work.

Have you ever consulted your technical author on previous deliverables to identify and reduce project risks?

Technical Writing | Disaster Recovery Plan

Document the Disaster Recovery Plan

Remember, to be effective you must be prepared to document the plan. Without the documentation you risk the possibility of NOT recovering from a disaster, therefore placing the entire company at risk.

If you have no existing documentation that describes the functions of the company’s servers and their hosted Applications, consider writing relevant Operating Document. In the event of a disaster, without knowing the role and the purpose of a server, as well as the Operating system – it could delay recovery.

A list of your critical systems

All companies will have a set of applications hosted on servers, which, are crucial to the business such as financials.

List your servers by priority and the criticality of the hosted Application – that is the amount of time the server and its applications can remain non-functional before it severely disrupts operations.

Create a disaster recovery plan for each critical system

This returns to the Operating document. To recover the system during a Disaster could take time, more so if the Owner is not available during the disaster to help login and failover the system then failback the system.

Therefore Keep documents simple, direct and to the point and written in such a way that anyone can understand the process, not just the SMEs who designed and built the system.

Who is responsible
Delegated participants must know and understand their responsibility should a disaster happen. Engage them in areas where they will know what to do and act accordingly. When compiling such lists make sure there are Team Leads, and Deputies should the first choice not be available during a disaster.

Make Backups
In this context be sure that if you use allocated drive space that your staff are backing up valuable information and documents to that allocated space.

Do you have an Off-site backup
Store all data in an Off-site Common.

Store Backups off-site in a location away from the same grid as the originals.

Test the Plan
On completion of the written plan, you enter the test phase. Make a plan to failover your infrastructure and then failback the infrastructure.

Take notes along the way to strengthen the areas in the plan which need more validation. Note where there is a need to access backup data time how quickly it takes to restore the system.

Keep the plan safe
Store a paper copy of the plan in a safe place. Remember: during a Failover, the online version could be unavailable.

When it comes to planning your Disaster Recovery strategy, do not forget the disaster recovery documentation. It may be the last project on your mind but could prove to be your company’s one lifesaver.

Disaster Recovery never stops and undergoes modifications every six months or twelve months.