PubsTrac: A Project Management Simulator  

The PubsTrac simulator is a new tool for teaching project management in a technical publishing context. It takes the form of a board game in which one or more people each manage one or more projects. Each project must progress through the many steps that make up a typical technical publication development project, and must deal with such problems as bad reviews, product redesigns, sick employees, and resource overloads. In this workshop, participants will actually experience PubsTrac in small groups.

Caernarven-Smith, Patricia and Anthony H. Firman. STC Proceedings (1995). Presentations>Education>Project Management

Quality Management: Fire Fighting to Fire Prevention  

Discover how a development team is transitioning from fighting to preventing fires by incorporating Quality Assurance (QA) testing as an ongoing part of the development process, rather than saving it for the finished product. Understand the pain of testing and rework at the end of the cycle, as well as the struggles during the transition to up-front QA. How did tools and processes change? What does the team have planned for the future? Learn by example how you, too, can make this transition in your company and start PREVENTING fires, not FIGHTING them.

Downs, Christina M. STC Proceedings (1999). Presentations>Management>Assessment

Rescuing an Ailing Documentation Project  

Some of the challenges associated with documentation projects are identified, and possible solutions are proposed. Methods for analyzing the elements of a project to reveal the best solution to the problem are provided. Areas to concentrate on include project requirements, the project team, scheduling, the project plan, and technical input. Solutions include taking action with regard to assessing timing, verifying inputs, project re-organization, and monitoring progress.

Nihmey, John and Anton Holland. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Management

Single-Source Content Management: If, Why and How  

Introduces the five levels of single-sourcing.

Hackos, JoAnn T. ComTech Services (2002). Presentations>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Single-Source Tools and Techniques  

Tools are a key component for the success of single sourcing. Tools should be selected to support the information model and development processes. Selecting the technology first, without a clear understanding of your information needs, may significantly restrict your ability to produce effective single source materials. This paper reviews the types of single source tools that are available to you today. The session presentation will review the available tools and provide their pros and cons.

Rockley, Ann. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Content Management>Single Sourcing

Some Laws of the Jungle And Why They Apply to Us Civilized Folks

Strategize, coordinate, then mentor.

Yorke, Peter. STC India (2003). Presentations>Management>Project Management

Son Of Bubba: Applying Chapter Experience To Business  

Being a chapter leader can lead to extensive learning and skill development. Many of us overlook the fact that these skills are transferable. Many of us attend the STC Annual Conference with expenses paid by our employer. We often do not attend chapter development sessions because we feel that, as employees, we should attend sessions more applicable to our jobs. Actually, many of the skill we learn in chapter development sessions and in being chapter leaders can be applied equally in well and effectively in our jobs. This paper explores an avenue of recognition that can be applied at work or in the chapter.

Skinner, Judith N. STC Proceedings (1994). Presentations>Management>Assessment

Star Wars Meets Employers: Creative Ways to Reward Employees  

The panelists represent managers from manufacturing, consulting, software and internet companies. Panelists will share with the audience: meaningful ways to motivate, acknowledge, and reward employees and teams, what works and what doesn't for employees who are older, younger, geographically separated, and telecommuters, and creative ways to reward employees on a shoestring.

Beadle, Diane, Ellen Goldhaar, Michele Gordon, Douglas McIntyre and Gloria Reisman. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Management

Starting and Maintaining A Documentation Department: Concepts, Principles and Techniques  

Starting and Maintaining a Documentation Department – Concepts, Principles and Techniques” includes information about assessing business needs, establishing credibility, building the department, understanding the product life cycle and development practices, and successfully maintaining a documentation department. It includes innovative, creative, and original management concepts, tasks, principles, techniques for newly promoted managers, managers new to a company, and for seasoned managers to ensure success or continued success managing documentation departments.

Hartman, Peter J. STC Proceedings (2000). Presentations>Management>Documentation

Stop Super-Sizing Your Release Plans  

As Agile development teams gain success, the team's bottleneck moves up the food chain to product owners. To support rapid and iterative progress, development teams are demanding that product owners switch from traditional approaches of super-sizing long release cycles to a continuous flow of independent, negotiable and small, bite-sized morsels.

Martens, Ryan. Rally Software Development (2006). Presentations>Project Management>Agile

Stop Super-sizing Your Release Plans  

In this presentation Ryan Martens and Luke Hohmann describe and show product owners how to think in terms of small, evenly spaced meals. They will introduce Agile principles, processes, tools and organizational structures that enable product owners to support their Agile development team's need for continuous, just-in-time elaboration of requirements and acceptance tests.

Martens, Ryan. Rally Software Development (2005). Presentations>Project Management>Agile

Success With Self-Directed Teams  

Faced with workflow process bottlenecks, shrinking development cycles, and increasing customer expectations for quick access to problem-solving knowledge, one department didn’t hesitate to take responsibility for restructuring their workflow process and job functions. The result was a more efficient and responsive organization, producing increased numbers of higher quality solutions in a more compact development cycle. Their success hastened the creation of a successful knowledge portal for the company, and proved the importance of content development in product design.

McCarthy, Dennis M. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Management

Taming a Telecommuting Team  

“Telecommuting” includes situations where members of a group (department, team, other) are working in different locations, communicating with each other and with clients by phone, fax, and e-mail. The team may be dispersed through an urban area, nationally, or internationally. Telecommuting has advantages and disadvantages over the traditional centralized working group and presents new challenges to management and staff As a team leader of telecommuting technical writers on software development projects, I have dealt with many of these Issues. In this discussion I cover some of the advantages and disadvantages and some principles and rules of successful telecommuting teams.

Weber, Jean Hollis. STC Proceedings (1996). Presentations>Management>Collaboration>Online

Ten Practical Techniques for Single-Sourcing with FrameMaker  

A PowerPoint slide show about using FrameMaker for single-source document creation and management.

WritersUA (2002). Presentations>Content Management>Single Sourcing>Adobe FrameMaker

The Theory and Practice of Outsourcing  

This paper discusses the reasons why companies are interested in information outsourcing (the theory) and how it can be made to work for the benefit of companies and individual information developers (the practice). The paper examines how information developers can, and do, react to the prospect of outsourcing. And by doing so, I hope to help information developers to understand the process and take advantages of the benefits it does offer them, while recognizing that there are some downsides to the process. where an organisation can best utilise its own core competencies.

Griffiths, Dave. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Management>Outsourcing

Three Whiz-Bang Online Ways to Promote Professional Development in a Whiz-Bang Online World  

If we're going to encourage our employees to ride the information Highway, we need to be training them wilh Lamborghinis, not horse-drawn carriages. Well, Toyotas, at least! An on-paper approach to professional development in an online world is self-defeating. Three online techniques that can act like fuel-injected superchargers to propel reluctant employees up the On ramp to the Information Highway are 1) HyperHighway: a HyperCard stack which leads users to inhouse resources and experties, 2) ExcelStaff: a Microsoft Excel skills matrix which helps managers develop and cross-train personnel through strategic staffing decisions, and 3) ElectroChat: an Electronic Bulletin Board approach which encourages professional growth through informal networking. Happy motoring!

Voss, Daniel W. STC Proceedings (1995). Presentations>Management>Online

Thriving in Ambiguity  

A panel of experts will discuss how to work in an authority vacuum. Whether working within or consulting to an organization, multi-talented, multi-tasked professionals are finding themselves working in an authority vacuum. Often, these jobs are nestled in the management ranks. Often, too, the position and the job are so new that the rules have not yet been written. Not everyone can function in such ambiguity. Yet major economic changes are forcing many of us to face more uncertainty than ever imagined. Not only can the panelists help define anew type of evolving management structure but they can also help in giving us concrete ways of dealing with daily uncertainties.

Sopensky, Emily A., Sally J. Derrick, Patricia Gabella, Robert G. Hurst and Krysti Ray. STC Proceedings (1996). Presentations>Management>TC

Thriving Teams  

We are going to examine the similarity between a well-functioning body and a thriving team. Specifically we’ll look be looking at balance, coordination, and growth. There are enough parallels in these three categories to show how when a team is treated the same way we treat our bodies we end up with similar results.

Ferrari, Tiffany. STC Proceedings (1999). Presentations>Collaboration>Management

Tips and Tricks of Information Management  

Technical communication, when it comes down to basics, is getting the right information across to the right audience, with results. But how do you wade through all that ocean of information? How do you sort them, separate them, store them, and retrieve them at your fingertips? In this presentation you will learn tools such as L files and Mailword, and share other tips and tricks of managing information in an open discussion with other participants.

Dijamco, Renato A. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Information Design>Management

Transition To Process-Based Policies and Procedures  

From mega-mergers to dwindling defense contracts, companies are dealing with a very different business environment than of decades past. To remain competitive, companies are implementing process improvement programs that encompass the ‘big picture’, and are not focusing on just one segment of company operations. This trend toward mega-process improvements has resulted in companies developing policies and procedures that reflect a flexible, process oriented approach, instead of the traditional, organizationally oriented procedures.

Houciayer, Jerri L. STC Proceedings (1997). Presentations>Management>Policies and Procedures

Trying to Measure Bad Things That Never Happen: The Rhetoric of Decision Making in Technical Communication  

Workplace decision-making practices cast the technical communicator into the role of technical rhetorician—a rhetorical specialist who must sometimes make difficult choices. Decisions involving technical communication receive the most scrutiny when bad things happen, but technical communicators often facilitate good things that are never measured. This paper examines three contexts that affect the technical communicator’s understanding of a situation requiring a decision: the rhetorical situation, the cultural context, and the procedural and ethical guidelines. Qualitative assessments that examine the multiple contexts informing the decision-making process are important to understanding the complexity involved in day-to-day decision-making practices.

Smith, Charlsye J. STC Proceedings (2001). Presentations>Rhetoric>Management

Using Databases to Manage Online Documentation  

Our methodology for knowledge base authoring guides you through step-by-step examples of how to create and maintain knowledge bases in a database. The methodology allows your team to develop simple solutions for information requests as well as sophisticated diagnostic trees for troubleshooting. With the information stored in a database, you are able to easily access the information and use it for a variety of projects.

Attubato, Karen M. STC Proceedings (1999). Presentations>Documentation>Management

Walking Through the Fires: A Case Study of Implementing a Formal Documentation Development Process  

The need for a more comprehensive documentation development process at Computerized Medical Systems, Inc. (CMS) was identified in an annual year-end review meeting of the CMS User Documentation Section. The goal was set to develop and implement such a process. A key component would be a set of comprehensive Content Specification Guidelines. Initial research consisted of reviewing existing literature and compiling a list of information considered essential to effectively plan a documentation project at CMS, based on discussion with software developers and technical communicators as well as experience gained from previous projects. The new process was implemented and has provided benefits throughout the company.

Watson, Frank. STC Proceedings (1999). Presentations>Documentation>Management

When Things Go Wrong: Working Toward Perfection While Accepting Imperfection  

Come to terms with unavoidable human errors by freeing yourself of panic, discovering new ways to solve the problems caused, and devising new procedures to prevent future mistakes.

Medved, Jane E., Lynne M. Brooks, Dayna A. Darby and Renee Ratner Lucas. STC Proceedings (1993). Presentations>Collaboration>Project Management

Wikis Are Coming: An In-Depth Exploration of Using Wikis in Documentation

In this podcast, Katriel Reichman, a technical writer at Method M in Jerusalem, Israel, talks in-depth about how to use wikis for documentation.

Reichman, Katriel and Tom H. Johnson. Tech Writer Voices (2007). Presentations>Documentation>Content Management>Podcasts