Improving Publication Quality Through Project Management  

A methodology for developing high-quality software developed by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University can also be applied to developing technical publications. This workshop addresses several aspects of this methodology using various project management techniques. By bringing your development process under better control, these techniques will ensure a more uniform quality in your publications.

Firman, Anthony H. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Project Management>Documentation

In Search of Subtlety    

What is the role of contradiction in organizational rhetoric? This article argues that existing research tends to focus on contradiction at an institutional level and then develop a distinct but complementary perspective that views contradictory rhetoric at an interactional level and as a practical concern, especially when routine is disrupted and repair tactics are required. Drawing on data from a study of a quality improvement initiative in the United Kingdom, the authors examine the contradictions that were constructed when a 'change champion' attempted to deal with resistance to change. They conclude by depicting how contradiction can emerge when actors reflexively shift their identifications to portray themselves and their actions in a contextually appropriate manner.

Whittle, Andrea, Frank Mueller and Anita Mangan. Management Communication Quarterly (2008). Articles>Management>Organizational Communication>Rhetoric

In, Out or Somewhere In Between

When considering possible staffing models for structuring your corporate communication function, your choices typically range from the extremes of establishing an all in-house staff to totally outsourcing the function by enlisting the services of a PR agency (or agencies) to do it all for you. More common is the combination that takes advantage of the benefits of the two previous options, while hopefully minimizing their disadvantages.

Eschbach, Peter A. Communication World Bulletin (2008). Articles>Management>Outsourcing>Public Relations

Incorporating Usability into Content Management

This article describes the importance of incorporating usability into all stages of implementing content management, including assessing your needs, assessing your users (of both the content and the content management system), and assessing your content. It questions the emphasis of technology in many of the current discussions about content management, and instead, advocates looking to the field of usability to form the basis of a content management implementation.

Rockley, Ann. Rockley Bulletin (2004). Articles>Content Management>Usability

Industry Takes Up The Challenge Of Sustainability  

Around the world, especially in Europe, companies are discovering that they have much to gain by employing the techniques of environmental management. They find that they are helping themselves, while improving the world we live in at the same time. By reviewing the effect on the environment caused by products and production methods, companies save money, improve their image, motivate employees and expand their influence, while often gaining new market shares because of better and more sustainable products. The stories of some of these companies are followed by guidelines for involving employees in environmental management to improve results and motivation.

Yelverton, Bonnie. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Management>Workplace

Information Architects and Their Central Role in Content Management

The process of content management begins when an organization comes to the realization that it needs a system to manage content. While the interpretation of the term content management (CM) can be as simple as a set of guidelines for organizing and maintaining content, more typically today it means a sophisticated software-based system. A full-featured content management system (CMS) takes content from inception to publication and does so in a way that provides for maximum content accessibility and reuse and easy, timely, accurate maintenance of the content base.

Warren, Rita. ASIST (2001). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Information Architecture and Business Strategy

Information architects need a good understanding of business strategy and its relationship to information architecture.

Morville, Peter. Argus Center (2000). Articles>Information Design>Management

Information Architecture and Ulcers

Being an information architect can be stressful. There are certain points in the design process that are more stress-inducing than others.

Morville, Peter. Argus Center (2000). Articles>Information Design>Project Management

Information Architecture of Content Management

When people think about content management, they generally think about it from a systems perspective, focusing primarily on tools and technology. While it is true that content management usually requires a technological solution, it also requires that content be designed for reuse, retrieval, and delivery to meet your authors' and customers' needs. Content management requires that tools be configured to support authoring, reviewing, and publishing tasks, but first, those tasks must be designed. Designing content and the processes to create, review, and publish it is what information architecture is all about. The Information Architecture section of The Rockley Report will focus on the different aspects of information architecture for content management. This article introduces you to some of the components of information architecture that we will cover in The Rockley Report over time.

Rockley, Ann. Rockley Bulletin (2004). Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Information Delivery: Single Source Documentation for Multiple Delivery Mechanisms  

Information for a software product is often presented in multiple places and in multiple formats, including printed manuals, quick-reference cards, online Help, online tutorials, online product information, and training materials. Delivery formats can include Acrobat Portable Document (.pdj files, he&n ( hlp) Jiles, HTML ( htm) files, PostScript Jiles, Write (wri) files, text files, and document book$les. Delivery media can include CD-ROM, floppy diskettes, magnetic tape, Web pages, and paper.

Flanders, Melanie G. and Nicole Y. Smart-Wycislo. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Information Development Organizations Evolving to Keep Pace with Change: A Collaborative Conversation of Information Development Managers     

This article reports on an online discussion of the Advisory Council for Information Development Management (CIDM), which is composed of directors, managers, and CEOs from corporations and a consulting firm. The conversation, conducted over 3 weeks in January 2000, covered several key themes: The expectation of greater productivity while budgets are flat or decreasing Meeting this expectation means a considerable rethinking, doing more with less, improving processes, and understanding total cost. The need for higher quality and improved usability This important need leads some organizations back to traditional editing, to embracing different development techniques (such as single sourcing, structured documents, and standard English), and to more robust interfaces. Innovative leadership and effective organization Strong leadership in a supportive and flexible organization is ultimately the cornerstone for success.

Rosenquist, Deborah J. Technical Communication Online (2001). Articles>Management>Collaboration

The Information Management Model  

Our grasp of single-sourcing has come a long way in the past few years. This is thanks in part to technology that makes it easier to reuse content and in part to our pundits that introduce new ideas into our community. However the practice of single-sourcing is not new. For decades other industries, such as manufacturing and software engineering, have been producing components designed to be reused in products across their companies and their industries. What we lack that has made single-sourcing successful in other domains is a common standard for the components. To reach any real measure of success, we must seek to standardize how we manage information. The Information Management Model is an idea that aims to take a step in that direction.

Hanna, Rob. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Knowledge Management>Information Design

Information Metrics: Keeping Your Writing Projects On Track  

Keeping information metrics for documentation projects gives managers the ability to more accurately estimate future projects. Publications departments can develop their own tools or they can use existing tools to track such things as page size, hours-per-page spent writing, illustrating, editing, and producing manuals; and the dependencies of each manual. This kind of information can help to determine development schedules, show how late changes affect the documentation process, and accurately determine what it will take to complete quality documentation on time and within budget.

Gordon, Judy L. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Documentation>Project Management>Methods

Information Modeling: A Practical Approach  

Information models are a critical component of single sourcing, enterprise content management, and dynamic content management. The information model is your blueprint for the effective writing, structuring, and delivery of reusable content. This session explains how to design information models, including information product models and element models. It also explains the role of metadata and how to effectively design it.

Rockley, Ann. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Information Design>Content Management>Project Management

Information Planning for Successful Online Documentation  

Creating an information plan should be the first phase of any publication development life cycle, whether hard copy or online. The plan is a tool for reporting the results of your research about your audience, their tasks, the market, and the product. The plan presents the basic organization and content of the publications you intend to build, effectively directing the documentation team to produce a publication with very specific goals in mind.

Stevens, Dawn M. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Information Design>Management>Documentation

Integrating Content Management with Portals: Meeting Enterprise Information Needs  

Effective communication is a top priority for most businesses. To help create, manage, and access information that is used to conduct e-business, technologies such as content management (CM) and enterprise information portals (EIP) are dominating IT and CIO discussions. We will review how these rapidly evolving technologies come together to provide benefits for enterprise implementers. Given the historical deployment of these technologies, many associate the application of content management solutions to externally facing sites, serving transactional e-business needs; and the application of portals to internally facing sites for general employee access to a wide range of information sources and applications. However, both technologies can provide support for the complete information lifecycle, from information creation to management to delivery.

CAP Ventures. Articles>Content Management>Information Design>Content Strategy

Intellectual Capital: Placing a Value on Technical Communication  

Carliner discusses the emerging discipline of intellectual capital, which attempts to develop accounting techniques for quantifying the 'brainpower' of corporations. The new service-oriented economy, Carliner argues, renders traditional accounting methods inadequate for determining the value of intangibles such as policies and procedures, the knowledge of a staff, and relationships with customers.

Carliner, Saul. Intercom (2000). Articles>Knowledge Management

INTERACTIONARY: Sports for Design Training and Team Building

This is an experiment in design education. The idea is to explode the process of design by forcing insane time constraints, and asking teams of designers to work together in front of a live audience. From what we've seen, it forces the discussion of design process, teamwork, and organization, and asks important questions about how designers do what they do. Below are summaries of previous events, and information about how to organize your own Interactionary.

Berkun, Scott. UIWeb (2001). Articles>Management>Collaboration

International Corporations and Cross-Border Knowledge Transfer in the Semiconductor Industry

Are international corporations superior to markets and alliances in facilitating the flow of knowledge between countries? Despite widespread acknowledgement of the superior efficiency of the firm in international knowledge transfer, the theory remains underdeveloped, and empirical support is conspicuous by its absence. This paper has two primary goals. First, to use patent citation data to compare the relative performances of firms, alliances, and markets in the transfer of technological knowledge between countries. Second, to investigate the reasons for the superior capability of the international corporation in facilitating cross-border knowledge flows by examining the mechanisms through which international firms manage international technology transfer. Our findings confirm the superior performance of firms over both alliances and markets as conduits for the flow of knowledge between countries. A more detailed examination of the experiences of five large semiconductor firms suggests that this superiority is the result of its ability to utilize a wide range of knowledge transfer mechanisms flexibly and in combinations with one another, and to embed these transfer mechanisms within a social context that enhances their effectiveness.

Carnegie Bosch Institute (1998). Articles>Knowledge Management>Workplace

International Project Management  

Declining domestic markets have opened global market opportunities to our entrepreneurs, A research has been made to determine if foreign clients view American project managers with suspicion. Some major problems encountered were: the lack of sociocultural sensitivities and failure to 'do our homework:' prior to taking on a foreign presence as an international project manager. Communications and inadequate foreign language knowledge are major problems. Overly aggressive behavior as guests in a host nation without respect to their social cultures can be selfdefeating. You can win!

Hamlett, James G. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Project Management>International

Introducing a Strategic Approach to Outstanding Content Development  

Great content doesn't happen by accident. By taking a rational approach that includes careful planning, diligent implementation, and well-tested delivery, vendor teams can ensure a successful project that satisfies client needs, budget constraints, and schedule demands while meeting the business objectives of both the client and the vendor.

Sakson and Taylor (2004). Articles>Content Management

Introduction of the DocuCat Information System for the Entire Product Documentation at Unaxis Displays

In order to improve this situation, the "Integrated Documentation" project was started in the fall of 2002. Our goal was to place the entire documentation of a system in a convenient manner (on CD or via Internet) at the disposal of Unaxis Displays service technicians and customers. Special attention should be paid to the linking of important information which is required again and again during maintenance and service work. The project derived benefit from the fact that Unaxis has been shipping electronic versions of operating instructions and spare parts catalogs to a number of customers for several years. The required internal processes and the software had been developed by CPTec GmbH. To be consistent, the same company was hired in order to extend the existing spare parts catalog solution to an overall solution named "DocuCat".

Ratz, Günter. CPTec GmbH (2003). Articles>Content Management

Introduction to Single Source, Part 1  

In the first of a two-part article, Butland examines the arguments for and against single sourcing, a method of producing documentation for several media from a single source. He also discusses the differences between manuals and help, and offers suggestions on how to conduct single source projects involving these media.

Butland, Philip. Intercom (2001). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Introduction to Single Source, Part 2  

In the second installment of a two-part article, Butland discusses obstacles to single sourcing and how to overcome them. Part 1, which explored the advantages of single sourcing and discussed the differences between manuals and help, was published in the February 2001 issue of Intercom.

Butland, Philip. Intercom (2001). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Introduction to the Diagrams of UML 2.0

Understanding the thirteen diagrams of UML 2.x is an important part of understanding OO development. Although there is far more to modeling than just the UML the reality is the UML defines the standard modeling artifacts when it comes to object technology.

Agile Modeling. Articles>Project Management>Workflow>UML