The procedure has been on your list since March. That date tells you more than any argument about discipline will. You could write your own documentation, and you might write it well. What it costs you to keep meaning to is the harder number.
When should you hire a technical writer instead of writing it yourself?
Hire a writer when the documentation has sat on your list for more than a quarter, when the process lives entirely in one person's head, or when an audit, a resignation, or a hiring push has put a date on it. Those three situations are the same signal in different clothing: the work has stopped being optional and still isn't done.
The reason it stays undone is rarely laziness. Documentation competes for the same hours as the work it describes, and the work always wins, because the work is on fire and the document is not. Until the day it is.
What does writing it yourself actually cost?
A first solid procedure takes most people six to ten hours: watching the task, writing it, testing it on someone, fixing what the test broke. Multiply that by the number of procedures you actually need, price those hours at what your own time is worth, and compare the result to a quote.
I spent years as the chief financial officer of a manufacturing company, and I learned to distrust any project estimate that assumed uninterrupted time. Yours will be interrupted. So measure this in calendar weeks rather than hours: how long it takes to find six or ten of them in usable pieces, and what happens on the floor while you look.
What are the signs that doing it yourself has stopped working?
The clearest sign is a draft that exists and nobody uses. The writing happened and the translation did not. A few others worth watching for:
- The same question reaches an experienced person more than twice a week
- Two people describe the same process differently and both are partly right
- Training a new hire still takes as long as it did three hires ago
- The only complete copy of a procedure is in the head of someone approaching retirement
- Your draft has been at ninety percent for two months
Any one of these is fixable in-house. Three at once is a capacity problem, and more of your own evenings will not solve a capacity problem.
When is writing it yourself the right call?
When the process is small, stable, performed by one person, and carries no audit exposure. Write that one yourself. It takes an afternoon, the person who does the work can test it the same week, and you will learn something useful about how your own documentation reads under pressure.
The math changes when a process crosses departments, when several people have to be interviewed and their accounts reconciled, or when the document has to survive an inspection. Those are a different kind of project, and most documentation efforts stall at the halfway mark because someone scoped them like the afternoon one.
What does a technical writer do that you are not doing?
The writing is the last step, and the shortest one. Before it comes the part that takes the time: standing where the work happens, asking the people who do it what they actually do, and reconciling the three different answers you get. Then the structure, which is its own discipline. Someone consulting a procedure is usually mid-task, mildly stressed, and looking for one step. Every choice about layout either serves that reader or gets in her way.
Then there is the work that falls to whoever happens to be holding the pen. Documenting a process tends to expose it: steps that duplicate each other, steps that survive out of habit, steps where the real practice wandered away from the written one years ago. Sorting that out is process design, and it is why my technical writing projects get scoped on a call rather than by the page.
What should you hand over first?
Hand over whichever process would hurt most if it failed on a day the person who runs it is out. In most companies that is quieter than whatever is making noise on Monday morning, which is exactly why it keeps getting postponed.
Begin with that one. Hand the finished procedure to someone who has to follow it, watch where they hesitate, and you will know a great deal before committing to a full set. One document done properly gives you a template, a price, and an honest answer about which kind of project this was. Common questions are answered on the FAQ, and a discovery call will settle whether this is an afternoon of your time or a job worth handing off.
Frequently asked questions
When should I hire a technical writer?
Hire a technical writer when the documentation has been on your list for more than a quarter, when a process lives entirely in one person's head, or when an audit, a resignation, or a hiring push has put a date on it.
Can I write my own SOPs?
Yes, when the process is small, stable, performed by one person, and carries no audit exposure. That kind of procedure takes an afternoon and can be tested the same week. Processes that cross departments or face inspection are a different kind of project.
How long does it take to write a procedure yourself?
Most people need six to ten hours for a first solid procedure, counting the time to watch the task, write it, test it on someone else, and fix what the test breaks. The real constraint is usually finding those hours in uninterrupted pieces.
What does a technical writer actually do besides write?
Most of it is observation and interviewing. A writer stands where the work happens, asks the people who do it what they actually do, reconciles the conflicting answers, and then structures the result for a reader who is mid-task and looking for one step. Writing is the last and shortest part.
