Guidelines for Conducting Effective and Efficient Meetings

This article puts forth a simple process that you can utilize for conducting effective and efficient meetings (where you work in a framework that aims at accomplishing the goal of the meeting and time is well utilized) at your organization.

Cone Trees (2009). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration

Components, Patterns, and Frameworks! Oh My!

In our research, we've found that teams that build out a re-use strategy see tangible benefits: They are more likely to get a completed design sooner, with all the little nuances and details that make for a great experience. Their designs are more likely to meet users expectations by behaving consistently across the entire functionality. Plus, the teams iterate faster (always a good thing), giving them a chance to play with the design while it's still malleable.

Spool, Jared M. User Interface Engineering (2009). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration>Methods

Why Businesses (Don't) Collaborate: Meeting Management, Group Input and Wiki Use

Today, content professionals are tugged in multiple directions, expected to multi-task their way through an increasing amount of work with the help of software tools designed to make them more productive. This survey aims to explore how you and your co-workers utilize software tools and determine, in various scenarios, whether they are actually a help or a hindrance.

Mader, Stewart and Scott Abel. Scribd (2009). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration>Wikis

Innovation Workshops: Facilitating Product Innovation

Innovation workshops can both help you come up with great ideas and align your multidisciplinary product team around them. Innovation workshops facilitate collaboration, foster trust, and promote free expression. They provide a venue for engaging a cross-functional team in brainstorming and creative ideation, filtering a large set of ideas, collaborating on design, rapidly gathering user feedback and iterating designs, and getting the consensus you need to drive an innovative product to market.

Nieters, Jim. UXmatters (2009). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration

Is This Meeting Really Necessary?

In a world of virtual tools—blogs, wikis, feeds, forums, listservs, e-mail, IM, chat, Twitter, social networks—one would think that the traditional sit-down, face-to-face meetings had been relegated to a place in a historical museum among other old, discarded traditions (like wearing cravats). But even in the 21st century, many people still believe that if you want to accomplish serious planning and discussion, you need an in-person meeting.

Johnson, Tom H. I'd Rather Be Writing (2009). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration

What's the Right Answer? Team Problem-Solving in Environments of Uncertainty    

Whether in the workplace or the classroom, many teams approach problem-solving as a search for certainty—even though certainty rarely exists in business. This search for the one right answer to a problem creates unrealistic expectations and often undermines teams' effectiveness. To help teams manage their problem-solving process and communication better, I teach a systematic comparison approach that transforms the search for certainty into a search for the best alternative based on clearly defined and weighted criteria. With this method, team members realize that all problem- solving involves subjective judgments, but that making that subjectivity transparent increases the chances that an adopted solution will in fact solve the business problem at hand.

Jameson, Daphne A. Business Communication Quarterly (2009). Articles>Education>Project Management>Collaboration

Why Good Projects Go Bad

The number of IT projects that end in failure is staggering. According to a 2007 study by researcher Market Dynamics, 62% of all IT projects miss their deadlines, 49% go over budget and 41% fail to deliver the benefits that were expected. That is worrying enough for IT departments. But for consultants and software vendors, keenly aware that project failure could well result in litigation, it is a constant concern.

Swabey, Pete. Information Age (2009). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration>Technology

Stasis Theory as a Strategy for Workplace Teaming and Decision Making    

Current scholarship tells us that skills in teaming are essential for students and practitioners of professional communication. Writers must be able to cooperate with subject-matter experts and team members to make effective decisions and complete projects. Scholarship also suggests that rapid changes in technology and changes in teaming processes challenge workplace communication and cooperation. Professional writers must be able to use complex software for projects that are often completed by multidisciplinary teams working remotely. Moreover, as technical writers shift from content developers to project managers, our responsibilities now include useradvocacy and supervision, further invigorating the need for successful communication. This article offers a different vision of an ancient heuristic—stasis theory—as a solution for the teaming challenges facing today's professional writers. Stasis theory, used as a generative heuristic rather than an eristic weapon, can help foster teaming and effective decision making in contemporary pedagogical and workplace contexts.

Brizee, H. Allen. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2008). Articles>Education>Project Management>Collaboration

How Soon is Now?

One common complaint a lot of technical writers have is that they aren’t included early enough in lifecycle of a project. The downsides are that by the time work hits your desk you don’t have a full picture of who the customer is, why they want whatever it is you are building, and how they want it provided to them. All of which directly impacts the information being created.

McLean, Donna. One Man Writes (2009). Articles>Project Management>Technical Writing>Collaboration

Managing International Assignments 

The traditional concept of an ‘international assignment’ is rapidly becoming a misnomer. Certainly the situation whereby an individual (with or without accompanying family) is sent to an overseas location for two or three years still occurs – despite the recent downturn in business. However, today there are all sorts of permutations of business activities that can result in business people working with international colleagues and clients. It may be that people are on short-term assignments (e.g. one to six months) in another country or that they are frequent business travelers visiting subsidiaries and clients or even that they are managers of long-distance teams working on developing new products for third country markets.

Cook, Richard. TC World (2009). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration>International