Becoming a better writer

“Why Scrum Should Basically Just Die In A Fire” is the title of an article written by Giles Bowkett that caught my attention a few months ago. Among all the topics discussed, he suggests that the Agile Manifesto principle about face-to-face communication “might be to blame” for inspiring Scrum’s daily stand-up.

His argument is that tools available at the time (2001) are not comparable with the ones that exist today and thus, there is no reason for encouraging face-to-face communication anymore. Especially in the context of the daily stand-up, which I must admit it often looks like a morning report rather than an “effective method of conveying information to and within a development team”.

I don’t agree with all of Giles’s points, because I believe face-to-face communication does have a place. But this paragraph resonated with me:

Well-written text very often trumps face-to-face communication. You can refer to well-written text later, instead of relying on your memory. You can’t produce well-written text unless you think carefully. Also, technically speaking, you can literally never produce good code in the first place unless you produce well-written text.

My colleagues complain sometimes that I rely too much on chat, emails and comments in your favourite issue-tracking tool to communicate my ideas. It’s true that I am a bit of an introvert, but that’s not really the reason.

Leaving the issue with open offices aside, I prefer to communicate in written for at work for three reasons:

1. It’s asynchronous. If I’m focused on something I can choose to ignore interruptions and answer later
2. It forces me to write better. If I want the person at the other end to understand me, I must be able to organise and communicate ideas clearly
3. Written text stay around and you can go back to them later. Spoken words are cheap and are forgotten fast

This might sound a bit radical, especially when you are sharing an office space with your team and going to someone’s desk seems like the most natural thing to do.

So taking things in balance, to what extent is writing an important resource in an engineer’s toolkit?

The importance of good writing skills

Back in 2007, when I was doing my internship, I borrowed Getting Real from my mentor. I learnt a lot from it and to this day I think it contains superb advice for any company.

On the Wordsmiths chapter they talk about a curious hiring policy:

If you are trying to decide between a few people to fill a position, always hire the better writer. It doesn’t matter if that person is a designer, programmer, marketer, salesperson, or whatever, the writing skills will pay off. Effective, concise writing and editing leads to effective, concise code, design, emails, instant messages, and more.

Good writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else’s shoes. They know what to omit. They think clearly. And those are the qualities you need.

When I read it, I took it this way: if I want to be a good engineer, I have be a good writer. And since then I’ve been trying to improve my writing and communication skills. It takes time to get better and I keep making mistakes. But it has helped me a lot because we engineers spend most of our time writing: code, documentation, user stories, bug reports, etc. Consequently, doing it effectively is an essential tool for us.

Let me give you another example. In 2016’s edition of App Builders Orta Therox gave an interesting talk about going open-source in your company by default. One of things he mentioned was that working in this kind of projects had made him a better writer because he had to (emphasis mine):

• Write code that is going to be read by others
• Write documentation that is going to be read by others
• Create pull requests explaining to others what the changes are about
• Report bugs describing what happens so that others can understand, understand and fix them

Did you notice the pattern above? Writing effectively is not about you. It’s about communicating clearly and concisely so that others can understand.

You can argue that those skills are naturally crucial in open-source projects because that’s the way work is done, but it’s not that important when your team is in the same room. Maybe you’re right. But I have found that frequently those are just excuses to justify my laziness and lack of empathy for others.

When in doubt, write it down

Face-to-face is sometimes the faster and most efficient way to go. It can convey more information in extended discussions, which otherwise would turn into a mess (e.g. scrolling a hundred of chat messages). Non-verbal communication also helps understand the nuances of spoken words.

But don’t underestimate the power of having good writing skills either. It helps you organise and communicate ideas clearly, it helps everyone understand them, it reduces the need of interrupting others and it helps you think twice before saying the first thing that comes to mind. As a consequence, it helps you stand out as a professional.

As with most things in life, the answer lies on finding the sweet spot. But when in doubt, I favour writing over talking.