Shannon A. McCue | STC Senior Member
You have $20 you’re willing to play in a slot machine. Walking the casino floor, you find one that looks like a winner—lights, music, and images of leprechauns promising gold coins. You insert your bill into the note acceptor (that’s what they’re called) and place your bet. Press SPIN. Round and round the reels go … hey, you won $5!
Did you know you just played a game of bingo?
I’m a technical writer and manager in the software engineering department of a company that produces casino slot machines. Our division creates Class II games, meaning the machine plays bingo in the background and presents you with an entertaining display based on whether your spin matched a winning bingo pattern. Most players don’t realize they’re actually playing bingo.
When I tell people I’m a writer in the casino industry, they assume I’m telling the player how to play the game, but I’m a typical software technical writer in many respects: my team writes administration, configuration, installation, and end-user guides for a client/server environment. One big difference between my current company and previous ones is working in an Agile environment. If you’re familiar with Agile, you know this means core Scrum team members are typically developers, QA testers, product owners, and Scrum masters. Where are the technical writers?
I’m passionate about finding a way for technical writers to fit into the Agile framework.
As the only writer initially, the engineering department had no set standards or processes for documentation. I established methods for how future writers would work with the Scrum teams and SMEs, fine-tuning every aspect of those processes with the teams after each sprint.
To function as a full-fledged team member, first I built rapport with my teams and gained their trust as a seasoned writer who understands their work and output. I actively engaged in all team meetings, contributed to product development, helped determine best ways for developers and QA to provide information to the writer, created an SME review process, and so on. I encouraged the use of existing tools to track documentation similarly to how the teams track their coding and testing work. I became an integral part of development, sometimes providing input that changed the user experience—and thus began my enchantment with the highly-collaborative Agile framework.
We hired more writers, and we tried to keep pace with the growing number of teams and projects. Being team members on multiple teams meant we were vulnerable to spreading ourselves too thin, so the company decided to try using a service organization approach. The technical writers formed an Agile documentation team using a Kanban approach. Our team, called Comma Chameleons (yes, we have a built-in theme song), provides documentation as a service to 12+ development teams across various projects. To put that in perspective, four writers cover about sixty developers’ work, conservatively.
I’ve been part of shaping and coordinating our place within the framework from day one, so much so that I’ve expanded my role into a management position. Many of the processes I helped establish earlier transferred to the new structure as well. My 20-year journey from internship to writer, editor, and now manager has led me to being determined to help technical communicators throughout the industry evolve with growing needs for efficiency, speed, and flexibility.
I’m excited to find solutions to some of our largest remaining obstacles so I can help writers in other companies find their place in the Agile framework.
When I’m not on the clock as a Comma Chameleon, I do what musicians in Music City do—sing at local venues. I’m part of a duo who plays classic country and rock favorites around town and at private parties or events. I met the other half of my duo at work! You can also find me and my husband listening to live music, meeting up with friends, heading to a casino, or driving my MINI Cooper with other middle Tennessee MINIs.
SHANNON MCCUE (shannonalisha@charter.net) is a technical writing veteran of more than 20 years. She is a hands-on writer, editor, and leader with a strong track record in creating thorough, usable documentation for end users, administrators, and business analysts. At her current company, Video Gaming Technologies, Inc., she manages the technical writing team and writes casino video gaming documentation while immersed in the Agile framework.
