Practical Tips for Working with Global Teams  

Save team members time and conduct meetings and other steps in the project process effectively by integrating these tips for working with team members scattered in various locations.

Nesbitt, Pamela and Elizabeth Bagley-Woodward. Intercom (2006). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration>International

The Problem, the Balloon, and the Four Bedroom House

Without a problem, there is no project. Where there is a problem, however, there is a stakeholder who is desperate for a solution and who has a delivery deadline — which is normally sometime yesterday. Find out how a good process can tame even the most unruly project.

Di Stefano, Joe. List Apart, A (2004). Articles>Project Management>Workflow

Process Maturity Model for Publications Organization  

Since 1994, I have continued to develop and test the Five-Level Process Maturity Model. The model has been validated with a number of publications organizations. As a result, the assessment questionnaire is complete, and an assessment process is in place. I have isolated eight significant characteristics that help the publications organization efficient and effective in meeting user and customer needs.

Hackos, JoAnn T. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Project Management>Publishing

Project Management for Creative Teams: Art and Science

The definition of a Project Manager varies widely, especially in the creative fields. Like the approaches and outcomes of a creative project, the team member’s project roles —including the project manager’s — change from one project to the next and from one firm to another. The purpose of this essay is to explore the practice of project management specifically in regards to working with creative teams and their specific needs and challenges.

Adaptive Path (2008). Articles>Project Management

Project Management for the Technical Communicator

Tasks need to be managed to be completed on time, with available resources to achieve the required result.

Bhatt, Sita Chandrakant. Indus (2005). Articles>Project Management>TC

Project Management for Writers  

Project management skills are part of every writer's life, in some form or another. However, the more you use these skills to manage your daily work, the more you will grow as a writer. Estimating, controlling scope, and tracking your progress are all part of delivering the product that your "customer" wants. Your primary tool is your documentation plan. In this workshop, we will discuss why these processes are important to you and how to implement them on your job.

Yeo, Sarah C. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Project Management>Writing

Project Management in a Home-Based Environment  

Acxiom Corporation provides a wide spectrum of data products, data integration services, and mailing list services, as well as data warehousing and decision support services to major firms in the United States and United Kingdom. Effectively supporting the company¡¯s documentation needs requires a project process that keeps work flowing. The Documentation team developed a process consisting of four phases: planning, design, validation, and delivery. This triedand- true process contributes to the success of our home-based team.

McKee, Kimberly and Deborah Lovell. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Project Management>TC

A Project Manager's Survival Guide to Going Agile  

When software development project teams move to Agile methodologies, they often leave project managers behind. Traditionally trained project managers are confused as to what their new roles and responsibilities should be in an environment that no longer needs them to make stand-alone decisions. This paper focuses on re-defining the job of project manager to better fit the self-managed team environment, one of the core Agile principles. Special emphasis is placed on the shift to servant leadership, with its focus on facilitation and collaboration. Mapping of PMBOK knowledge areas to Agile practices is discussed at length. After reading this paper, project managers should have a better understanding of what changes they need to make professionally, and how to make these changes in order to survive the transition to an Agile software development approach.

Sliger, Michele. Rally Software Development (2007). Articles>Project Management>Agile

Proposal Production: Creating Calm Amid the Chaos  

The production of a winning business proposal can be a tough and trying time for all involved. But with the use of some simple tools, strategic up-front planning, and effective management techniques during actual production, the proposal task can run smoother and more eflciently. And by following these guidelines you can lead a highly efficient proposal stafs through the toughest proposal efforts and produce a proposal document that wins new business and moves your company forward.

Wilson, Richard P. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Grants>Proposals>Project Management

Publications Project Management A Toolkit for Overcoming Common Pitfalls  

Traditional project management 'science' and generic tools rarely match the unique needs of publications projects. The high-degree of human interaction and creativity involved in publication projects makes managing them more and than a science. This discussion/demonstration focuses on the unique challenges involved in managing publications projects and common pitfalls to avoid. We explain why we at Comprose, Inc. created the Documentation Blueprint Project Management Toolkit for managing publications projects, and we demonstrate how technical communicators can use these Custom-designed tools to make any publication project run more smoothly -- whether your project involves just one person or twenty.

Anton, Kathy, Teresa J. Tarwater and Andrea Heugatter. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Project Management>Publishing

Publishing a Project Weblog

Running a project Weblog is a great way to collect, organize, and publish the documents and discussions that are the lifeblood of the project and to shape these raw materials into a coherent narrative. The serial nature of the Weblog helps you make it the project's newspaper of record. This kind of storytelling can become a powerful way to focus the attention of a group. The desire to listen to a compelling story and find out what happens next is a deep human instinct.

Udell, Jon. InfoWorld (2003). Articles>Project Management>Community Building>Blogging

Quality Management in Software Development Projects

How do you ensure that business software systems will be good quality, i.e. they will meet the business need and have few bugs? How might 'testing' be perforned at the requiremenst and design stages?

Roberts, Mike Harding. HRA Consulting (2004). Articles>Project Management>Quality

Real Costs Of Technical Publications  

This workshop shows a technical publication manager or rising professional how to work in the following technical publishing/financial areas: project management, operating budget preparation and management, and quality control.

Caernarven-Smith, Patricia. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Publishing>Technical Writing>Project Management

The Real Costs of Technical Publications  

This workshop shows you how to balance the relationships among time, money, and output. Time is defined as your time and the machines’ time. Money is what this all costs. Therefore, your manuals, screens, and moving media cost money - money we can account for. In this workshop, we will tackle some timehonored questions.

Caernarven-Smith, Patricia. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Project Management

Requirements: A Primer for Communicators  

Poorly written requirements are the single biggest point of failure in the development of new software systems. Requirements that are not carefully defined or are written in ambiguous terms result in an endless stream of re- working and budget overruns. Smart project managers these days are trying to solve the problem with the addition of professional communicators to their project teams to both elicit crisp requirements and express them in simple, accessible terms.

Shelton, Jan D. and Karen A. Steele. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Project Management>Proposals

RUP and Goal-Directed Design: Toward a New Development Process

Interaction design methodologies, such as Goal-Directed Design, tackle the software development process from the top down by defining specific product requirements and interface behavior based on research and user needs. The Rational Unified Process (RUP) and other agile programming methodologies attack software development from the bottom up. RUP creates fluid efficiencies for iterating product development during the construction phase in order to react to changing product requirements while still producing shipping code.

Cronin, Dave. Cooper Interaction Design (2003). Articles>Project Management>Programming

Service-Oriented Project Management

The primary reason most projects fail is because the focus of the execution and the measurement of projects is too narrow and inwardly directed.

Manas, Jerry. Gantthead (2008). Articles>Project Management

Setting Up Business Stakeholder Interviews Part 2

In part one, Michael shared how to navigate company politics to set up great stakeholder interviews. Here he covers his five tips for navigating company politics, avoiding client bias, and eliciting the information you need to inform your design.

Beavers, Michael. Boxes and Arrows (2007). Articles>Interviewing>Project Management>User Centered Design

The Six Biggest Mistakes Project Managers Make with Documentation and How to Avoid Them

Professional business writers, such as technical authors, typically break a document down into small, discrete units of information, organised around a skeleton of topic headings. If you use this 'component' or 'modular' approach, you can plan and structure the document using the heading 'labels' that describe each section.

Pratt, Ellis. Cherryleaf (2007). Articles>Documentation>Planning>Project Management

Six Reasons You Don't Need a Technical Writer (and Why They're Dead Wrong!)

Hiring the right freelancer to do the job correctly the first time around could save you hundreds or thousands in help desk calls, service calls, document revision, and distribution. Here's why.

Zuccardy, Ann. Ezine Articles (2005). Articles>Project Management>Writing>Technical Writing

Squelching Project Creep

We've all been there. The Project that never seems to end and then (finally!) ends badly. Unfortunately, the all-important post-project analysis is a step that's often left off the 'to do' list, so how can you head off another project disappointment? Let's face it. Project plans are theory, so they can be picture perfect; project planning, however, is practice, and practice must take into account the inevitable changes that will occur throughout a project.

Edwards, Verlane. STC Central Iowa (2001). Articles>Project Management

Strategic Planning at a Government Laboratory: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory Technical Information Department's Experience with Planning     

While acknowledging all the ways in which LLNL has failed to make optimal use of strategic planning tools, the authors believe that this planning process has helped their organization to disengage from the everyday 'work harder' perspective and to refocus on the 'work smarter' or 'putting the ladder against the right wall' goal, insofar as they have been able to do. The authors maintain that however imperfect one's strategic planning process is, it is nevertheless the best way to focus management attention. When a plan is flawed, its existence enables others (whether employees, upper management, or interested reviewers) to criticize and thereby improve it. Each year's plan further serves as the foundation for a better plan the next time around, defined in whatever way makes sense to the management team.

Peterson, Steve and Mara Niels. Technical Communication Online (1997). Articles>Management>Project Management>Government

Strategic Planning: How 'Bifocal Vision' and a Living Document Create Success    

Technical communication managers may not be practicing strategic planning because they receive mixed messages about the need to plan and the need to be flexible and receptive to change. Yet today's manager must have ?bifocal vision: the ability to both commit to a plan that creates operational efficiency and to anticipate (and participate in) its change. A strategic plan must be understood as a living document--created to be updated. This article integrates current management theory on strategic planning with the author's experiences in strategic planning as an information systems manager. Written and oral communication have significant roles in creating, disseminating, and implementing strategic plans. Vision and mission statements, workplans and project management, steering committees and status reports are the means to 'live out the plan.' Finally, the article provides recommendations for technical communication professionals.

Kryder, Leeanne G. Technical Communication Online (1997). Articles>Management>Project Management

Strategies for Sizing UCD Projects

When discussing strategies for sizing UCD projects with consultants, it quickly becomes evident that there seem to be as many strategies as there are consultants. This document will define and describe commonly used strategies, identify each strategy’s scope (i.e., whether it applies to design, research, or evaluation), suggest situations in which each strategy would be best suited, and identify pros, cons, and caveats to its use.

Usability Body of Knowledge. Articles>User Centered Design>Project Management