Team Meeting, January 12, 2010  

Imagines a high-tech conference call in the future.

Reed, Dian Duchin. Intercom (2000). Articles>Collaboration

Team Meets Dream: Successful Online Documentation  

This paper chronicles the development of an online program that is in use and thriving today - a process which has spanned two years and two different companies. The presenters share the encouragement and pitfalls they met along the way, with emphasis on the elements they found most important in making their efforts a success. Selection of the most appropriate tools and methodologies play an important part. But just as important are team member skills, willingness of others to share their experience, high-level sponsorship, an environment that supports innovative solutions, and plain old persistence.

Piacenza, Alexandra and Sandra Pirghaibi. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Documentation>Collaboration

Team USA: The USAbility Team  

Most companies want to be recognized for producing usable products, for the quality of products must be high if they are to be accepted into today's competitive market. However, usability planning relies on interaction with other departments and their members. In other words, the most successful way to ensure product usability is to set up a test team consisting of representatives from various departments. This paper details the members of that test team and discusses their overall responsibilities in the testing process.

Dorazio, Patti A. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Usability>Collaboration>SMEs

Teambuilding Insights from the Newsroom

To the uninitiated, a newsroom on deadline may seem more like a scene of chaos than a smoothly functioning team. Having spent the early part of my career in newsrooms and the rest in corporate settings, I can say that the closest I have ever come to the high-performing teams executives struggle to create has been in the world of daily news.

Dunsavage, Jeff. Communication World Bulletin (2006). Articles>Collaboration>Journalism>Workflow

Teaming In A Publications Group   

The technical publications group of The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory was restructured to eliminate the traditional hierarchical organization in favor of multiple concurrent work teams. Every job is assigned to a work team, and people usually are on several teams at once, as leaders of some teams and members of others. We present two case studies describing teams that operated very differently. The teaming system allows us to tailor the approach to the needs of different clients.

Morris, Margaret K., Patrice H. Zurvalec and Murrie W. Burgan. STC Proceedings (1999). Careers>TC>Collaboration>Case Studies

Teams and Stars

All-star teams lose. While it’s an honor to be chosen to an all-star team, it’s miserable to play on one. These teams are constructed without consideration for how to bring people together. Whenever an all-star team plays a mediocre, but intact team, they usually lose. The true goal of any team is not to have the best players for each position: it's to succeed. Success comes when a team makes use of the team's abilities towards a goal, something you don’t get merely by picking the best players at each position.

Berkun, Scott. ScottBerkun.com (2001). Articles>Collaboration

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

Teamwork Creates a Positive Working Environment

In our present economic system, competition is viewed as a positive force. As children, our parents undoubtedly rewarded us for being the best, the fastest, the cleanest, or the smartest. As adults, we learn very quickly that only the best can be successful in a highly competitive world. While this competitive spirit can often help us to perform to our limits, when applied in its purest form within a work environment (i.e., when the competition is not of the friendly variety) it frequently results in hostilities that are counterproductive to producing good results.

Zvalo, Peter. Writer's Block (1995). Careers>Collaboration>Workplace

Technical Assistance for Writers in the Workplace: Some Heuristic Uses of Professional Writing Techniques in a Multiauthor Writing Process     

Linda Flower's work serves as the basis for devising writing technical assistance in three case studies of multiauthor reports. One major barrier to audience-based writing, planning—and, hence, producing readable text—is the writer-based structure embodied in a project's work program. Writing technical assistance can help displace this structure by various means, including collaborative writing. But the interaction between the two activities basic to writing—creating specific audience-based goals and devising a new hierarchical structure for content knowledge—remains unclear in theory and in practice.

Baker, Linda. Technical Communication Online (1996). Articles>Collaboration>Workflow>Writing

Technical Communication as Business Strategy: How Changes in Discursive Patterns Affect the Value of Technical Communication in Cross-Functional Team Settings    

Business seldom views technical communicators' contributions as offering strategic thinking and services. Companies tend to view technical communicators as tactical and technical, rather than strategic and creative. Consequently, often in cross-functional development settings the ideas and recommendations of technical communicators are not valued in the same way that ideas from business strategists, marketing, or other fields are. This paper details a case study in which the role of an information architect, a title that more and more technical communicators use to describe themselves, becomes valued by a design firm's client and by the firm itself as strategic business advantage. I explain why the role of the information architect increased in value and how the increased value changed the job description. I look at how blending knowledge occurs through shifts in terminology, imitation of another field, and selling new concepts.

Norton, David W. Technical Communication Online (2000). Articles>Collaboration>Workflow

The Technical Communicator's Role in Initiating Cross-Functional Teams    

This article focuses on cross-functional teams in software development environments. While very formal approaches to cross-functional teams exist, this article focuses on less formal approaches based on existing literature and case studies. Technical communicators are ideal candidates for implementing cross-functional teams on an informal level. Because of this, they can also be excellent catalysts for initiating formal cross-functional approaches in their organizations, even if their organizations have never used cross-functional teams before.

Marchwinski, Theresa and Karen Mandziuk. Technical Communication Online (2000). Articles>Collaboration>Workflow

Technical Communicators’ Forum (TC-Forum)

The idea for TC-Forum evolved during Forum 95. Forum 95 was an international conference organized by the international umbrella organization INTECOM, the International Council for Technical Communication. Forum conferences take place every five years. The first one was held in Malmö, Sweden, in 1975, the last one in Germany in 1995.

TC-FORUM. Resources>Collaboration>Community Building>Europe

The Technical Editor as Diplomat: Linguistic Strategies for Balancing Clarity and Politeness     

An essential component of technical editors' work is to convey to writers how their documents would benefit from revision. This task is potentially sensitive, given writers' intellectual and emotional investment in the documents they have created. The sensitive nature of the editing process is clear in Rude's (2001) advice to students of technical editing: '[A]void words that suggest inappropriate editorial intervention, especially change ' (p. 43). Rude's advice suggests an awareness of the difficulty inherent in imposing oneself into the creative process of another person. Because of the defensiveness they might encounter in writers, editors must be cognizant of how they carry out their jobï¿the language they use to convey necessary changes to writers' documents. The language editors use can either facilitate good working relationships with writers or degrade those relationships.

Mackiewicz, Jo M. and Kathryn Riley. Technical Communication Online (2003). Articles>Editing>Collaboration

Technical Writer as a Team Member—A Case Study  

In light of the current emphasis on teamwork in the workplace, this case describes one project benefiting from a technical writer on the team. This case study describes a nine month process of meetings and collaborations among a team of diverse professionals. The role of the technical writer involved identifying document content, assigning writing tasks, coordinating review, and overseeing production.

Carter, Kathy E. STC Proceedings (1993). Presentations>Collaboration

Technical Writer/Subject Matter Expert Interaction: The Writer's Perspective, the Organizational Challenge    

Almost a decade ago, Walkowski's (1991) study of the interaction between subject-matter experts (SMEs) and technical writers focused on the perceptions of software engineers toward technical writers. Her findings gave technical writers insights on how to improve critical relationships with these organizational colleagues. This study partially replicates Walkowski's (1991) study of technical writer-SME interactions, but instead of collecting data from SMEs, we surveyed technical writers themselves. We report perceptions collected from 31 technical writers and contrast them with Walkowski's original findings, offering interpersonal and organizational recommendations for addressing tensions between these groups. By examining both the SMEs' and the technical writers' perceptions of their relationship, we are able to provide a two-sided view of a dynamic and complex interaction. We also argue that participants in the SME-technical writer interaction cannot fully alter their relationship without the strategic supp

Lee, Martha F. and Brad Mehlenbacher. Technical Communication Online (2000). Articles>Collaboration>Technical Writing>SMEs

Technical Writers and Trainers as Facilitators of Change  

Effective technical writing/training in my organization involves a model of performance that goes beyond traditional ideas about documentation and passive training methods. It involves a practice which, in a single word, I would call facilitating. Documents are part of it and new or changed behaviors by people in the organization are part of it, but a traditional writer or a traditional trainer, whether alone or working together, will not be able to achieve what we ask of them in our organization. Essentially, the model we have found successful and that we expect our technical writer/trainers to be able to implement involves the following.

Hotz, Glenn. CPTSC Proceedings (2000). Academic>Education>Collaboration

Techniques for Successful SME Interviews  

Lambe offers tips for gathering information from SMEs.

Lambe, Jennifer L. Intercom (2000). Articles>Interviewing>Collaboration>SMEs

Technology and Professional Workgroups

Through both theory and practice, we will explore various computer technologies used to support professional communication within groups. In the first part of the course, we will study major theories of group interaction and computer-mediated communication to gain critical faculties for examining the use of technology by professional workgroups. In the second part, we will use these theories to investigate specific technologies, such as email, Lotus Notes, NetMeeting, and other groupware applications used in various professional contexts. You will leave this course with not only a working familiarity with such technologies, but also a theoretical framework for critiquing their use in future workplace settings.

Honeycutt, Lee. Iowa State University (2000). Academic>Courses>TC>Collaboration

TECHWR-L: A History and Case Study of a Profession-Specific Listserv List    

Until Spring 1993, technical communicators had few Internet resources of their own. They could find common ground in forums oriented toward specific word processing programs and other tools of the trade, but they had no place to discuss profession-specific, rather than tool-specific, issues. TECHWR-L was founded that spring, and the growth, development, and response to the list has been remarkable. Most significant, however, is the effect that TECHWR-L has had on individual technical communicators worldwide. It demonstrates that the Internet can and should be used to provide more focused and comprehensive resources to technical communicators in the future. This case study outlines the growth and development of TECHWR-L, discusses some of the more controversial aspects of the list, and outlines how TECHWR-L or some other focused forum could prove an even more valuable resource for the profession.

Ray, Eric J. Technical Communication Online (1996). Articles>Collaboration>Mailing Lists>Technical Writing

Ten Strategies for Consilience

Can we achieve a true convergence among fields, with science and the humanities working in tandem to produce knowledge? This paper attempts eight rhetorical and two political strategies in a 'gedanken experiment' to assess which among them might meet with greatest success in achieving that congruence.  Some of the strategies will be adaptations of prominent writers, including theorists in Technical Communication.  The question whether science and the humanities should, in fact, operate from the same attitudes and assumptions will be addressed in a final section.

Missimer, Constance A. Orange Journal, The (2001). Articles>Collaboration>Community Building

Ten Sure-Fire Ways to Fail as a Change Agent

In an effort to be less than constructive, here are ten sure-fire ways to alienate and de-motivate your team on your change journey. Hit-or-miss approaches don't go far enough; this is your chance to use the best methods of corporate torture and humiliation developed by dictators, steamrollers and other "tough guy" change agents.

Paulson, Terry L. Communication World Bulletin (2003). Articles>Management>Collaboration

Ten Tips for Talking to Artists  

Explains some of the terminology used to describe graphics and explains the roles graphic designers play in the production of technical art.

Lyons, Chopeta C. Intercom (2004). Articles>Collaboration>Technical Illustration>Graphic Design

Textual Grounding: How People Turn Texts Into Tools    

The author argues that users see texts as tools when they recognize the texts' specific value and function within highly localized use settings. The author argues that users "ground" their texts to local use settings by altering the ways in which the texts structure and represent information (e.g., underlining, annotation, and sketching). The author discusses three practices by which texts are grounded as tools in document reviews: mode shifting, layering, and marking. These practices reflect different ways by which users add, subtract, and restructure information in a text so that it is usable under very specific conditions. This article explores document review as a practice in which grounding is the object of discussion (how others use the reviewed documents) and a practice by which review is facilitated. These observations will be important for exploration of technology to support "grounding" practices.

Swarts, Jason. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2004). Articles>TC>Collaboration