Articles>Project Management>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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Finding Solutions by Being Aware of the Way You Think

It is the task of the project manager to be aware of the larger environment in which a project is operating. One approach that helps achieve this insight is systems thinking.

How to Talk to Your Boss about Social Media (So She’ll Approve the Budget)

The use of social media for business is certainly a hot topic. For today’s post, Comet Branding’s new partner, Sara Meaney shares her first Comet Branding Blog post with us and dives into the big question on many people’s minds - “How do I convince with my boss that social media is right for our company?”

When Trust Becomes a Characteristic Flaw in a Project

As hard as it may seem, lesson one of technical writing is to break the rules and contact the end user. Conduct a mini-ethnography. Sit with the users. Call them on the phone. Send them emails. Do not let it get to the point where you feel you must go through the PM to communicate with the end user. As hard and uncomfortable as it may be, the consequences of not talking to the end user can be crippling to your help.

Project Management, Critical Praxis, and Process-Oriented Approach to Teamwork

To help alleviate issues of free-riding and conflicts in team projects, this study proposes the systematic incorporation of project management methods to introduce a process-oriented approach to and a critical praxis in team projects. We examined how the systematic use of project management methods influenced students' performance in team projects. The findings demonstrate that such an approach enables the documentation and evaluation of and reflection on both individual and team work. Our findings indicate that project management tools enhance team member accountability and help reduce free-riding.

The UX Designer’s Place in the Ensemble: Directing the Vision

What does directing have to do with creating a user interface design? Well, we know a director is responsible for the strategic vision of creative work. That’s a given. But, did you know he is also responsible for ensuring a successful outcome that both meets his vision and is in line with the producer’s desires and budget? To make that happen, a director works with the cast, crew, costume and set designers, and everyone else who contributes to a successful theatrical production to pull together a cohesive product, without losing site of his vision. It’s a complicated job.

Setting Priorities

Nearly every company I’ve worked with since becoming a web professional six years ago has lacked an efficient way to decide which things to do first. Put 10 people into a room for an hour, and they’ll surely come up with a wish list a mile long.

Feature Presentation

A spiral of complexity, often called “feature creep,” costs consumers time, but it also costs businesses money. Product returns in the U.S. cost a hundred billion dollars a year, and a recent study by Elke den Ouden, of Philips Electronics, found that at least half of returned products have nothing wrong with them. Consumers just couldn’t figure out how to use them. Companies now know a great deal about problems of usability and consumer behavior, so why is it that feature creep proves unstoppable?

Look at it Another Way

Seeing the same thing from different perspectives is much praised but little practiced. We don’t often realize what we can gain by seeing another scene in the picture.

Conducting Effective Team Technical Reviews

Mention team technical reviews to a group of tech writers and chances are good that you will either get a loud, collective groan, or the group will vie to tell the best review horror story. On the one hand, technical reviews are a vital part of our jobs because they help us to produce high quality product documents. On the other hand, technical reviews gone wrong are the bane of our existence. The good news is that we have the power to conduct consistently effective technical reviews. This article summarizes why we do reviews and what often goes wrong in reviews, and then summarizes steps to take before, during, and after technical reviews that can help you conduct effective team technical reviews. Although your process and team may differ from what's described here, you can apply the information in part or in whole to improve your current review process.

Be Productive When a Project Stalls

With more and more companies adopting the Darwin Information Typing Architecture, Baril discusses how to choose a compatible content management system that also supports your company's processes.

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.

Documents That No Project Cannot Be Without

Short deadlines force project teams to quickly design, test, and release the product with little or no design documentation. If these documents are written, they generally are not well-written and are not comprehensive. The fact of the matter is that most project teams do not have enough staff to design the product, let alone write and manage documentation. This situation creates an ideal opportunity for technical writers to assist the project team in more ways than writing a user guide.

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.

The Hidden Relationship Between Project Managers and Technical Writers

Want to know the secret to better quality documentation and improved software design? Will Kelly outlines how the key is an effective relationship between project managers and technical writers.

Comics: Not Just for Laughs!

Every project has its own unique set of 'opportunities'--also known as challenges. Many of these challenges relate not to the quality of our work, but rather to the communication of our ideas. Often in the course of design, you must communicate complicated concepts to a non-technical (and often uninterested) project sponsor, client, or stakeholder. So how do you capture their interest, get their understanding and buy-in, and finally move on?

Usability Team Structures

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.

Getting Started with Performance Management

What are some ways to effectively track and manage a group’s performance? Wiley examines a way to do so using specific requirements designed to measure the success of an STC SIG.

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.

Easing Into Agile Modeling

Agile modeling started out fairly complex and it grew a bit into its current form.

On Development Methodology

Give me the smallest, smartest team possible, with the right tools and infrastructure. Work like fiends for two or three months to get infrastructure and applications started right, then grow slowly to maintain and build additional applications on the core technology.

Whose Team? Managing and Participating in Non-Traditional Work Teams

The non-traditional team environment is an evolution in our way of doing things. Virtual, blended, and multi-located team structures provide solutions to a myriad of complications that arise from traditional teaming—such as economic feasibility and skill-set cause and demand. It allows clients access to talent and skills they would not otherwise have, and enables specialists greater flexibility and availability. Professionalism and integrity are key in the non-traditional environment. Team members must be able to work isolated and/or with individuals who represent other companies. Managers must be equitable and be able to maintain strong lines of communication.

Long-Distance Teams: Facing the Challenges

Offers advice for managers of long-distance teams on working across time zones, accommodating team members' cultural norms, easing the difficulties of language differences, and nurturing team spirit.

Bilingual Team Writing: Planning a Project

A two-person bilingual writing team enabled a software application development group to produce on-line documentation and a user guide simultaneously in two languages. Team writing in an international environment requires detailed planning, constant monitoring, and continuous communication in order to succeed.

Collaborating in Project Management, Long-Distance

From early 1993 through July of 1994, three STC chapters jointly managed a research project on Technical Communication in Western Canada. Based in Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver, the managers were thousands of miles apart, relative strangers and simultaneously engaged in running their own businesses. In this volunteer assignment, they involved committees within their own chapters. As team building and collaborative arrangements become more prevalent in technical communications projects, it can be instructive to look at how such a farflung research project fared. We will relate this experience briefly to some research results reported in Technical Communication.

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.