Crafting Engineering Strategy

Chapter 11. Writing Readable Engineering Strategies

You’ve learned by this point in the book that a complete engineering strategy has five components: explore, diagnose, refine, set policy, and operate. That’s an effective sequence for creating a strategy, but it’s challenging for those trying to quickly read and apply a strategy without necessarily wanting to understand the complete thinking behind each decision. The order in which you write your strategy isn’t necessarily the order in which your audience should read it.

This chapter covers:

• Why the order for writing a strategy is hard to read

• How to organize a strategy document for reading

• How to refactor and merge components for improved readability

• Additional tips for writing effective strategy documents

After reading it, you should be able to take a written strategy and rework it into a version that’s much easier for others to read.

Why Writing Structure Inhibits Reading

Most software engineers learn to structure documents as students. Academic essays present evidence to support a clear thesis and generally build an argument forward toward a conclusion. Some business consultancies train their new hires in business writing—for instance, McKinsey teaches Barbara Minto’s  The Pyramid Principle: Logic in Writing and Thinking (Prentice Hall, 2010)—but that’s the exception.

While academic essays want to develop an argument, professional writing is a bit different. Professional writing typically has one of three distinct ...