Building a Technical Communication Program

I address myself briefly to two questions that will likely confront anyone who considers increasing the number of technical writing programs. First, what is the market for technical communicators? Second, how does one go about setting up a program?

Pearsall, Thomas E. ADE Bulletin (1982). Articles>Education>Management

Building and Managing Virtual Teams

Chris Nagele’s run Wildbit, creators of hosted Subversion app Beanstalk, for 8 years virtually. He lives in Philadelphia and his team is all over the world. So, he knows a few things about virtual teams and shares them in this article.

Nagele, Chris. Vitamin (2008). Articles>Management>Collaboration>Online

Building Knowledge Assets for the Advancement of Science

As I read more and more about knowledge management, I came to realize that it is a new name for what the science community has been doing for a long, long time. In fact, a working definition of science might be, simply, the management of knowledge resulting from observational and experimental evidence. One could well argue that the science community has been doing knowledge management for centuries.

Warnick, Walter L. OSTI (2000). Articles>Knowledge Management

A Business Case for Usability

This is a business case for usability in an organization. It is based on academic research, industrial research, case studies, consulting experience, and common knowledge found in the usability community. 

Rhodes, John S. WebWord (2001). Articles>Usability>Management>Business Case

Business Decisions in a Digital Enterprise

All about automating, managing and aligning business decisions in a modern, digital, agile enterprise.

BRMS Blog (2006). Articles>Knowledge Management>Technology

Buttress Your Benchmarking Efforts

A smart company understands that a favorable reputation improves its bottom line. From a PR perspective, a strong reputation acts as good will, giving you the benefit of the doubt with both journalists and the general public. To find out how strong your company's reputation is, it is helpful to compare it with the reputations of other companies, also known as benchmarking.

Merlin, Matthew. Business Communication World (2005). Articles>Management>Public Relations>Assessment

Buyer's Guide to Content-Management Tools

As your sites become more critical and complex, you need tools to automate management--and you need them now. Enter the new generation of Web site content-management products--a seasoned batch of tools and systems ready to help you meet the challenges of the brave new Web world. There's a wide range of products out there, and while they overlap somewhat in functionality, the phrase Web site content management means different things to different people. For some, content management is really asset management--that is, a system to keep track of media assets, such as graphic elements, text and video. More commonly, however, Web site content management refers to a set of integrated tools that helps manage some portion of the whole range of site development and deployment tasks. Although no single product can do everything, many offer deployment/publishing, versioning and rollback, site design and page authoring tools, link checking, access control, change routing and notification, and site-visualization tools among their features.

Hoffman, Richard. Network Computing (2000). Articles>Content Management>Software

Cadence Design Systems, Inc., Knowledge Transfer Plan Benchmarking  

Describes the motivation behind a Knowledge Transfer Plan benchmarking study conducted by JoAnn Hackos and Comtech. Bradbury wanted to compare Cadence’s publications and training organizations to other organizations’. She has integrated the findings into plans for the new year. JoAnn Hackos describes the benefits of participating in benchmarking activities. They include: peer and professional contact, the exchange of best practices within the field, understanding how other groups deal with the similar issues, and so on. Dr. Hackos introduces her partnerbased model of benchmarking in which companies cosponsor the studies, bringing increased participation at less costs.

Bradbury, Julie and JoAnn T. Hackos. STC Proceedings (1999). Articles>Knowledge Management>Usability

Calculating RoI Using Industry Metrics  

Why prove our value; how value is measured; who decides what to measure.

Bailie, Rahel Anne. STC Region 7 Proceedings (2002). Articles>Management

Calculating the Financial Impact of DITA for Translation

Success in a global marketplace requires translating content into multiple languages. Moving to a topic-based XML architecture, such as the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA), can help you control the translation process and save money.

Swope, Amber. Writing Assistance (2007). Articles>Content Management>Translation>DITA

Can Academic Partnerships in Technical Communication Work?: Lessons from Minnesota  

Interuniversity partnerships are widely encouraged as a way for public universities to pool increasingly scarce resources, to minimize duplication of academic programs, and to cooperate rather than compete. Joint programs in technical communication have not been widely studied, but they seem especially logical for several reasons.

Black, Suzanne. CPTSC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Education>Management>Collaboration

Cargo Cult Websites

A cargo cult website is a site that has all the bells and whistles of a dynamic community facing website but might as well be hand coded HTML for all the difference it really makes. The sites that imitate other sites and wonder why they too are not earning billions. A fine example of Cargo Cult CMS is Drupal. It is an overweight and underpowered system that tries to incorporate every kind of template system and every kind of website type in order to summon the gods of cool websites, community or success.

Lordmatt.co.uk (2007). Articles>Content Management>Community Building>Drupal

Case in Point: Cisco’s Model For Change Management

A few months ago, a company-wide team at Cisco Systems Inc. was challenged to come up with the best model for change management. Several team members had experience in change management through various disciplines, such as process management, HR consulting, communication, Six Sigma and IT. In the first meeting, the team recognized many factors that would affect how they moved forward: hundreds (maybe thousands) of models already existed, thousands of consultants had their favorite models and were eager to help, and employees were familiar with models from other companies.

Horn, Karen. Communication World Bulletin (2004). Articles>Business Communication>Management>Case Studies

A Case of Exhaustive Documentation: Re-centering System-oriented Organizations Around User Need    

Braun Corporation's home-grown documentation processes served the organization well for its first 50 years as it grew from a local to a nationally-competitive producer of mobility and accessibility products. Now poised to become a global leader in its field, this corporation found its efforts hampered by ineffective and outdated documentation practices, which were hurting the company's competitive advantage. This article describes Braun Corporation's curious mixture of global reach and local isolation. By bringing in a technical communicator with expertise in user-centered design, Braun has begun reforming its formerly exhaustive documentation and communication practices. While technical communicators have incorporated a variety of strategies to develop user-centered and task-based documentation, less attention has been placed on changing the cultures of these organizations. The case presented here represents a shift from establishing documentation procedures to critically assessing and reforming existing procedures for the global workplace, describing the shift from ineffective and exhaustive processes to effective processes with defined goals and measurable outcomes. The article concludes with an inventory for determining whether other organizations are over-documenting processes and products, and offers suggestions for creating better documentation procedures.

Salvo, Michael J., Meredith W. Zoetewey and Kate Agena. Technical Communication Online (2007). Articles>Documentation>Management>User Centered Design

A Case Study in Developing Dynamic Content at Ontario Systems

Charles Cantrell, an Information Engineer, describes Ontario Systems' process for delivering dynamically assembled and populated documentation for Artiva, its 'highly customizable' accounts receivable management application.

Cantrell, Charles. Rockley Bulletin (2004). Articles>Documentation>Content Management

A Case Study in Modular Documentation  

Modular documentation is a variation on single-sourcing methodology developed by Interim Technology Consulting in response to a client’s needs. Our client needed documentation on multiple formats that could be easily modified for multiple customers of their customized software package. The process of developing the modular methodology required considerations such as how to define, structure, and access the information modules in a way that worked for the current project and also provided a foundation for future projects. Interim Technology also wanted a methodology we could use for other clients.

Johnson, Melanie M. STC Proceedings (2000). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Case Study: Implementing a Content Management System  

This paper presents a case study of implementing a content management system in a federal government setting. This case study may aid technical communicators who are interested in leveraging content management technology and who work for complex organizations or organizations with intricate communications requirements. Included in this paper is a detailed description of the background, approach, and early lessons learned for this implementation. The implementation was still in process at the due date of this paper. Additional lessons learned will be in the presentation's slide set and available from the Society for Technical Communication (STC) website at www.stc.org.

Pettit Jones, Colleen, Jane Mitchko and Marc Overcash. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Content Management>Case Studies>Government

CEOs and Usability

As a usability professional, there are many reasons why you might speak with your CEO or other senior leaders. For example, you might need funding for a new laboratory or testing equipment. You might also need to justify current or future expenses, such as salaries, end user remuneration, or your travel budget. Most conversations are financial in nature.

Rhodes, John S. and Daniel Szuc. uiGarden (2006). Articles>Usability>Management

The Challenge of Line Manager Communication

There is a great deal of research around these days that makes the connection between employee engagement and good line manager communication. After all, as the saying goes, people don’t leave bad companies, they leave bad managers. The reality is there are many elements that make a bad manager. As communication professionals, we are not there to solve all the problems of socially challenged managers, but we do need to help them fulfill their role in effectively communicating to their people.

Cropley, Adrian. Communication World Bulletin (2007). Articles>Business Communication>Management>Workplace

Challenging the Transformational Agenda: Leadership Theory in Transition?    

There are many terrific leaders at large. But society and business have suffered from poor leadership, bad leadership, narcissistic leadership, and above all, too-powerful leadership. Viewing followers as recalcitrant infants in need of tough parental attention really will not do. Too much leadership discourse has evaded this kind of problem: Fairhurst (2007) offers a challenging alternative to a route that frequently leads to a dead end. The myths of powerful, transformational, and charismatic leadership offer short-term comfort. It would be consoling to believe that Superman has stepped from the cinema screen and into the boardrooms of our organizations, whatever his attire. But such comfort exacts too high a price.

Tourish, Dennis. Management Communication Quarterly (2008). Articles>Management>Theory

Challenging Your Assumptions: Entrepreneurial Groups Offer Idea Incubators

I recently had a conversation with a colleague about business development. While that's neither revolutionary nor even terribly uncommon, what was different was that we weren't commiserating about business cycles or the fact that when we're busy we often neglect the very activities that bring in new projects. Instead, we were talking about strategies for moving our businesses in new directions. When was the last time you questioned your business strategy or seriously considered adding a new business line or branching out into a new service area?

Steigman, Daria. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Business Communication>Management

Characteristics of Web Site Content

Web site content must be recrudescent, repositorial, refluent, and rectilinear. What? Here's an innovative treatment of the essential attributes of online text. Find out why great web site content generally has these 14 characteristics that start with a "R".

Streight, Steven. Blogger.com (2005). Articles>Web Design>Content Management>Usability

Cherryleaf Survey: Use of Single-Sourcing Solutions

During March and April 2003, Cherryleaf carried out an online survey into the current trends in technical communication. One of the questions we asked was: Do the people directly involved with user assistance development at your organization use a single sourcing authoring solution? Our findings are summarised in the article

Cherryleaf (2003). Articles>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Reports

Choices and Challenges: Considerations for Designing Electronic Performance Support Systems    

Introduces the breadth of decision-making required in EPSS design. Explores choices and challenges facing designers in the design process, performance cycle, technology constraints, use of storytelling techniques, evaluation, and success factors.

Carliner, Saul. Technical Communication Online (2002). Articles>Content Management>Web Design>EPSS