Technical Documentation Internship
Background
Technical Writing
User Guides
Collaboration
Content Management
As a Technical Writing Intern on Tanium’s documentation team, I created real, customer-facing content for a cybersecurity and systems management company securing over 32 million endpoints worldwide. Working alongside a senior technical writing mentor, I contributed to a company-wide content migration from MadCap Flare to Heretto, updated user guides based on real Jira tickets, and completed an independent research project on an AI-driven workflow solution, which I presented to Tanium’s R&D team at the end of the internship. Because Tanium is a cybersecurity company, some specifics, like internal tools and the exact topic of my research project, aren’t included here.
Challenge
The main tasks I completed during this internship include:
- Migrated content from MadCap Flare to Heretto, including independently migrating a full set of ServiceNow integration guides.
- Updated the Deploy and Jump Gate user guides based on Jira tickets, often researching doc-impact across Slack, engineering repos, and test environments before drafting.
- Applied topic-based authoring principles, classifying content as task, concept, or reference topics to fit Heretto’s DITA-based structure.
- Collaborated directly with developers and product managers, using Notion review pages to gather feedback before publishing to help.tanium.com.
- Researched and proposed an AI-driven workflow improvement for the documentation team, based on independent research and interviews with the team.
- Presented final research findings to an audience of about 200 people on Tanium’s R&D team.
Results
Impact
- Delivered content updates that shipped to production, including guide updates supporting a new confidence score feature and a set of Jump Gate improvements.
- Gained increasing autonomy over the internship, from working through a first ticket under close mentorship to communicating directly with developers on later projects.
Practicum Reports
Midterm Status Report
Final Status Report
Video Presentation
Work Products
Patch guide: troubleshooting update
Reference: Common Patch errors page: new section
- Wrote a new troubleshooting section for a Linux-specific Patch module error, filling a gap in existing documentation.
- Published to both cloud and on-premise guides.
- Marked my first hands-on introduction to Tanium’s authoring tool, during my first two weeks on the job.
Deploy guide: confidence score update
Overview page: Software package confidence score update
Managing software page: Create a software package updated step 7
- Updated the Deploy user guide to document a new confidence score feature.
- Researched the doc-impact across Slack, engineering repositories, and a test environment, since the ticket didn’t specify exactly what needed to change.
- Incorporated feedback from a developer and product manager before publishing.
Jump Gate guide: sprint updates
Jumping to endpoints page: Jump to an endpoint updated step 6
Approving jump requests and viewing activity page: updated session monitoring note
- Worked through an entire sprint board, rather than a single ticket, to identify a set of needed updates.
- Evaluated doc-impact across multiple features at once, rather than focusing on a single fix.
- Implemented and published the updates after incorporating feedback from a developer and product manager.
My Approach
Here’s how I approached the work throughout the internship:
- Learned Tanium’s authoring tools by working through a real ticket in my first two weeks, rather than starting with purely conceptual training.
- Built independence over time, moving from reviewing already-migrated content to migrating full guide sets on my own.
- Worked from ambiguous tickets and sprint boards by tracking down context across Slack, code repositories, and test environments before drafting.
- Incorporated feedback from both my mentor and relevant developers before publishing any content live.
- Took on any task given to me, staying willing to try new things and asking for help when I needed it.
- Approached every project as a learning opportunity, staying clear on expectations and communicating honestly with my mentor and manager about my progress.
- Shaped a technical presentation for a developer-heavy audience by drawing on technical communication coursework and storytelling techniques, culminating in a live demo for Tanium’s R&D team.