#26651
Strategies for Sizing UCD Projects 
Sizing UCD projects presents special challenges to usability practitioners and consultants. Each project and UCD methodology comes with its own set of variables that makes it difficult to accurately estimate resource requirements and completion times. The goal of this effort is to discover best practices for effectively âï¿ï¿sizingâï¿ï¿ UCD projects.
James, Janice and Carol Righi. User Experience Magazine (2005). Articles>User Centered Design>Project Management
#31670
A Structured Approach to Selling
High-value goods and services are not impulse purchases. Both the purchaser and vendor may need to invest significant time in the purchasing process. When I first started working for myself, I wasted much time. Now I make the process as efficient as possible, both for myself, and for enquirers.
Unwalla, Mike. IEEE PCS (2008). Articles>Project Management>Collaboration
#28601
Successfully Managing Agile Projects in the Waterfall Enterprise 
Agile and waterfall methods are utterly different—from the way projects start to the expected deliverables and release schedules. In a waterfall world, what's an IT enterprise to do? Can agile and waterfall methodologies successfully coexist? The answer is yes, for both the short-term and the long-term. In this presentation, Michele Sliger outlines how to: factor your company's business needs into existing agile processes, streamline requirements and activities and identify specific points where agile and waterfall teams must plan, coordinate, and review progress. Learn how you can make agile processes work in the real-world.
Sliger, Michele. Rally Software Development (2007). Articles>Project Management>Agile
#28600
Tactical Management of Agile Development: Achieving Competitive Advantage
This whitepaper provides an Agile development overview full of techniques, best practices and educational materials.
Leffingwell, Dean. Rally Software Development (2007). Articles>Project Management>Agile
#10334
Taking a Cue from the Health Professions: Applying the Logical Framework to Strategic Planning 
Strategic planning is asking business-defining questions, finding answers that reflect the company's priorities, and then turning answers into activities. A tool for planning commonly used in public health intervention programs is a matrix called the logical framework; it has been modified here for use in strategic planning. The logical framework is a practical means of defining and appraising the relationships between activities and results.
Thivierge, Bethany. Technical Communication Online (1997). Articles>Management>Project Management>Biomedical
#28603
A Tale of Two Technical Writing Teams
Sometimes considered an afterthought in the product development lifecycle, technical writers often struggle to become part of a performing Agile team.
Broderick, Stacia. Rally Software Development (2007). Articles>Project Management>Agile>Technical Writing
#29415
Teamwork and the Product Documentation Process
Get to know your new teammates. Get to know your audience. Define the product's features. Create a mockup of the user interface. Begin to document the features and interface.
Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Geoff-Hart.com (1997). Articles>Documentation>Project Management>Collaboration
#26500
here are advantages to being a bad development manager. For one thing, you don’t stand out from the crowd; most development managers are pretty bad. For another thing, bad development managers have a knack for getting promoted in the face of all evidence to the contrary. With mediocrity as the norm, bad development managers have an edge: nobody expects much of them. Perhaps best of all, bad development managers don’t have to do a lot of original thinking. This article identifies the 10 most common things that bad development managers know in their bones. If you follow all 10 of these rules, you’ll be able to hold your head up as the baddest of the bad.
Hedtke, John. IEEE PCS (2005). Articles>Project Management>Documentation
#24814
Tips and Tricks for Successful Project Management
Project management is part science, part art. This presentation provides both perspective on techniques for successful project management and specific, practical tips on how to plan and manage documentation and training projects.
Natchez, Meryl. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Project Management
#30179
Tools and Models for Managing Project
Project management is as much art as science. But even artists follow recognized approaches to creating their work, and they rely on practical tools to do so. Three elements of project management--regardless ofproject size or scope--will determine success: creative estimating; project planning; and effective tracking. These three elements don't need to be complex, and they don't need to be time consuming. Building a standard approach and simple, reusable tools can streamline the project management process with minimal overhead while assuring the necessary control.
Bierbower, James G. and Kate Hayden. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Project Management>Methods
#28560
Top Ten Mistakes in Content Management Implementation
Implementing and working with a CMS can be a challenge. The author provides some common reasons why CM implementations fail so you can try to avoid such mistakes.
Bailie, Rahel Anne. Intercom (2007). Articles>Content Management>Project Management
#29946
Top Ten Tips for a Successful Content Management Proof-of-Concept
Are you looking to buy a single-source content management system and want to take it for a test drive? Great idea! Choose your favorite system and do a proof-of-concept. Here are ten tips to prepare for a proof-of-concept and ensure its success.
Mescan, Suzanne. Content Wrangler, The (2007). Articles>Content Management>Project Management
#23030
Translation management is becoming a common task for the technical writer as companies enter the global marketplace. It is challenging and interesting, but at the same time it is generally a complex project management task and is not to be taken lightly. This paper discusses a real-life translation project and points out some of the problems that you may encounter.
Tunsley, Roger A. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Language>Localization>Project Management
#29905
Usability Requirements: Making User Satisfaction a Measure of Product Success
Defining usability requirements at the beginning of the project increases the chances that the end product will meet the users' goals and create a satisfying user experience. Unfortunately, such requirements are often not considered with the same priority as functional or other technical requirements. This presentation defines usability requirements, proposes guidelines for creating measurable requirements, and elaborates the components of a well-constructed usability requirement.
Bachmann, Karen L. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Project Management>Planning>Usability
#28644
There are two basic alternatives for structuring a usability/UCD group within an organization: members of the group can be centralized in a single department, or, members can be distributed among development teams.
. Usability Body of Knowledge (2007). Articles>Usability>Project Management>Collaboration
#25257
Use Cases Part II: Taming Scope
The use-case model can be a powerful tool for controlling scope throughout a project's life cycle. Because a simplified use-case model can be understood by all project participants, it can also serve as a framework for ongoing collaboration and a visual map of all agreed-upon functionality. Use it to plan, to negotiate, and to prevent scope creep.
Carr, Norm and Tim Meehan. List Apart, A (2005). Articles>Web Design>Project Management
#23768
Proper usability design commonly cuts training costs by 50 percent and increases productivity by 25 percent.
Nielsen, Jakob and Kara Pernice Coyne. CIO Magazine (2001). Articles>Project Management>Usability
#29703
Using Downtime Effectively as the Deadline Approaches
Technical communicators are often expected to write manuals and Help systems concurrently with programmers as they develop the product. While this helps ensure the documentation is ready when a product is released, it also creates some headaches for the writer. Many of the features that must be documented aren't functional until late in the development cycle. The writer must then wait for the features to be completed, while anxiously watching the deadline grow nearer. Fortunately, by keeping a sharp eye on planning and making advance preparations, the writer can minimize the effects of the unavoidable, last-minute rush to the finish.
Danda, Matthew. STC Proceedings (2005). Articles>Documentation>Project Management
#23026
Using PERT to Plan and Schedule Your Documentation Projects
Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) is a proven project management tool that can be applied to documentation projects. PERT is used to identify: (a) the interrelationships between the various milestones of a project, and (b) the critical path of activities, the path more resources should be concentrated to complete the project on schedule. A PERT network is a graphical representation of the plan and schedule of the project. The technique is effective in non-repetitive documentation projects where project managers have an accurate assessment of their resources.
Aikat, Shish. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Documentation>Project Management
#22148
Using the Information Process-Maturity Model for Strategic Planning
Why should we be interested in strategic planning for our information-development organizations? We might simply apply specific tactics for getting our everyday jobs done. We might focus our concerns on producing a manual or getting the online help finished. We might even plan far enough in advance to send staff members to workshops on the latest online help development tools. These tactics would get us through the day, or the week, or even through the end of the year, and we would be busy doing useful things (or at least things that we hope others find useful). But as we keep busy doing our everyday jobs, we may find ourselves surprised by the decisions of those who decide to eliminate our function, outsource our tasks, or disperse our staff throughout the organization. Only then we will recognize that we lacked an overall goal, a vision of what we should be doing, of how we want to be perceived in the future.
Hackos, JoAnn T. ComTech Services (2000). Articles>Project Management>Management
#29426
Using the Triage Method in Technical Writing
Pragmatism is the necessary first step: do the best job you can do under the conditions. Nobody's going to benefit if you do a superb job on half the manual, then die of stress before you can document the important parts in the second half.
Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Geoff-Hart.com (1999). Articles>Project Management>Writing>Technical Writing
#10361
Visualization Strategies for Team-Oriented Problem Solving, Analysis, and Project Planning
This article describes visualization methods used by many international organizations in the design of development projects. In this context, development projects means projects that are designed to improve the quality of life for people living in a developing country. During the project design workshop essential elements of a discussion and subsequent analysis are visualized as the discussion takes place and displayed to the participants. This visual record is kept in view through the whole period of the discussion. The visual methods of identifying, analyzing and structuring a problem dramatically improves the efficiency and effectiveness of the problem solving process and the quality of the final solution. The techniques enable a large amount of knowledge available within the group of participants to be collected quickly and allows complex problems to be taken through several steps of analysis.
Lewis, Paul. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>Collaboration>Project Management>Rhetoric
#29910
WebWorks Publisher In Action: A Project Management Perspective
From October 2001 through August 2002, a team of two technical authors converted the documentation for a Web Content Management System from a series of static manuals to a single-sourced, dynamically delivered context-sensitive online help/print manual combination. This paper covers the challenges encountered and overcome when resources became more scarce and demands rose. It offers some technical insight in the application of Adobe FrameMaker and WebWorks Publisher Professional to achieve the goal of manageable documentation.
Gill, Harold B., III and John Swymer. STC Proceedings (2004). Articles>Content Management>Project Management>Case Studies
#25261
One of the biggest problems in creating and delivering a site is how to decide, specify, and communicate exactly what we’re building and why. Use cases can help answer these questions by providing a simple, fast means to decide and describe the purpose of your project. In this quick-reading article, Messieurs Carr and Meehan introduce use cases and their, uh, uses.
Carr, Norm and Tim Meehan. List Apart, A (2005). Articles>Web Design>Project Management
#30582
Could it be that not every set of business requirements has the customer's best interest in mind? Karl Wiegers had always believed that implemented software functionality should enable users to accomplish their goals and help the business achieve its objectives. But a recent experience with a less-than-helpful parking meter system suggested to him that conflicts sometimes might exist between business and user requirements.
Wiegers, Karl E. StickyMinds (2007). Articles>Project Management>Programming
