How is topic-based writing advantageous to tech writing teams?

You may be wondering why breaking up a huge manual project into smaller topic writing projects is advantageous to the writing process.  Why not just write a book chapter by chapter and use copy and paste? 

You’re likely to end up with a huge mess especially if there are many writers working on the same manual.  The worst thing that can happen is the loss of trust by the reader when they stumble upon an inconsistency or error as a result of many hands being in the making of one manual.  If someone forgets to update a change in the manual or clumsily leaves something out during the copy and paste process, the reader is the one to notice and many times when a reader finds an error or inconsistency, they leave the book.  So to sum it up, topic-based writing is advantageous to writing teams because they can each contribute specific topics that support the other topics that the other writers are writing about.  In other words, multiple writers can contribute to the larger set of information.  Writers can share their topics with other writers for editing and reuse purposes, so many writers can work on one huge manual at the same time without having to worry about unlocking content.  Each topic is usually one file.  This allows writers to be able to quickly reorganize content.  You can change the order of different task topics if a product’s design changes.

Reviewers can review smaller chunks of information (topics) instead of long books at a time.  This allows for better and more in depth feedback.

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Lisa Logan has been writing professionally since she was a student at North Carolina State University where she earned her bachelor and master’s degrees. She started out writing profile articles for the N.C. Literary Review, interviewing various North Carolina authors of fiction. Her own creative works were published in several issues of the Raleigh News and Observer’s short fiction section Sunday Reader. Lisa’s passion for screenwriting led to freelancing for a national screenwriter’s magazine Creative Screenwriting in which she writes features, interviewing Hollywood screenwriters, high-level film producers, directors, and actors. Lisa’s work can also be found in Our State magazine and Our State’s now defunct sister publication NC Signature.