6 parts · 7 chapters

Technical Writing and Influence

At staff level, most of your impact travels through documents and meetings: the design doc that sets a direction, the strategy that aligns six teams, the one-page summary that gets a budget approved. This course treats writing as an engineering skill with structures, checklists and examples you can copy.

Six parts: design docs and RFCs; strategy documents; decision records; writing for executives; presenting; and running a design review. Every part includes a template and a before-and-after rewrite.

Start reading · Part 0 Present as slides
design docs and RFCs · strategy documents · decision records · writing for executives · presenting · running a design reviewsenior → staff · engineers whose work needs other people to agree
design docsProblem, constraints, options, decision, risks, rollout.
strategyDiagnosis, guiding policy, coherent actions.
decisionsShort records of why, kept next to the code.
executivesThe answer first, then the ask, then the evidence.
presentingOne message per slide; rehearse the first minute.
reviewsMeetings that resolve questions instead of reading documents aloud.
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Design Docs and RFCs

A template that forces the hard parts · Before and after
2 ch · ~12 min01

Strategy Documents

Diagnosis, policy, actions
1 ch · ~8 min02

Decision Records

A record in full
1 ch · ~8 min03

Writing for Executives

Answer first
1 ch · ~8 min04

Presenting

A ten-minute decision talk
1 ch · ~8 min05

Running a Design Review

Facilitation and feedback
1 ch · ~8 min
Built on Big-company Backend and Systems ThinkingUses the RFC process from Big-company Backend P2 and the reasoning tools from Systems and Critical Thinking.