The Importance of the Quality Culture  

Cameron discusses the effects of three models of quality cultures in American and European corporations: error detection cultures, error prevention cultures, and creative quality cultures.

Smart, Karl L. Intercom (2001). Careers>Workplace>Quality

Improving Document Quality Through Customer Visits  

In an effort to improve the quality of our documentation, our Information Development department personally visited over 80 of our customers in 10 different locations across the United States. Our goal was to find out what we needed to do to create documentation that would satisfy our customers' needs. We came up with a process for planning our visits, gathering the information from our customers, implementing their requirements, and increasing communication with them. From the visits, we not only made changes that immediately satisfied our customers, but we created an environment for them to work with us as a team.

Lass, Laura W. and Wendy L. Reed. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Documentation>Quality>User Centered Design

Inspections: Part of the Quality Evolution  

Inspections are apart of the rebirth of Total Quality Management directed at customer satisfaction. Although inspecting documents takes extra time and fortitude, the rewards far outweigh the investment. A formal inspection process improves the quality of documents and reduces costs over the long term. Through early defect detection, inspections have proven their value time and time again. In this workshop, we will share inspection process guidelines used at Bull Information Systems, and raise issues related to inspections.

Alicee, Audrey L. and Leigh A. Wales. STC Proceedings (1996). Careers>TC>Quality

Managing Quality: Systems and Metrics for Ensuring Quality in Products

There is, at present, no common definition of quality in technical communication--no common set of quality measurements for our profession.

Fisher, Lori H. STC Orange County (1998). Presentations>Management>Quality>Assessment

Measuring Quality

We need to know what quality is to develop a metric to measure it.

Fisher, Lori H. STC Proceedings (1999). Presentations>Quality

Measuring the Value that You Add to Your Company: Planning Your Own Case Study on Reducing Support Costs  

In this interactive session, we will lead technical communicators through a process of setting up and conducting a study to find out how much support is costing their organization or their clients’ organizations. We will also help technical communicators cost-justify their work by estimating reductions in support costs. We will help them plan case studies to show how highquality technical communications can reduce support calls and costs.

Ramey, Judith A. and Janice C. 'Ginny' Redish. STC Proceedings (1995). Careers>TC>Quality

Review: The Metaphysics of Information Quality: Comments on Producing Quality Technical Information    

The expressed promise in the title of Producing Quality Technical Information is that following its prescriptions will yield 'quality' technical information. This commentary asks what the term quality means here and whether the manual delivers on its promise. In other words, which of the several senses of quality is intended in the title, and the does the publication deliver as promised? That is, which of the major quality schemes corresponds to the rationale of the text: legalistic quality, in which quality is conformity to a long list of detailed regulations and specifications (as in ISO 9000); principle-based quality, in which quality is the result of working according to a small set of broad precepts; or mystical quality, in which quality is an indefinable property or spiritual construct, toward which virtuous people should aspire.

Weiss, Edmond H. Journal of Computer Documentation (2002). Articles>Reviews>Quality>Assessment

Methods for Documentation Testing in Technical Publications Quality Assurance  

Traditionally, verification of documentation procedure accuracy follows a standard model: technical communicators prepare a draft, which is submitted to subject matter experts for review. This process hinges on a number of factors that can adversely affect the quality of the review. Higher quality reviews are conducted by staff tasked specifically to test and review the draft procedures, and supply specific feedback by means of an established procedure. A well-established method of documentation testing provides several benefits to an organization. These include customer satisfaction, reduced costs, improved overall product quality, and improved document draft correction.

Lippincott, Richard J. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Documentation>Quality>Assessment

Minimalist Strategies for Improving User Documentation  

Those who use our products often ignore our best efforts at good documentation because they prefer to explore and learn by trial and error. Several researchers have developed document strategies that might help our users explore, learn, and recover from their errors. In order to use these strategies, however, technical communicators must get to know their users better, prototype their documentation, and test it on their users. Researchers need to tell us more about active learners and strategies for meeting their needs.

Elser, Arthur G. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Documentation>Quality>Minimalism

Noteworthy Observations About Note-Taking by Professionals    

In this article we focus on professional readers who have to write recommendations in an online environment. We address the question whether taking notes on screen influences the reading process and the quality of the recommendations in terms of applicability, completeness, and persuasiveness. Seven participants each composed two pieces of advice on technical communication issues. They could use an electronic Notepad whenever they wished. Taking notes appeared to influence advice quality negatively, which may be caused by attention shifts from reading to taking notes on screen. Although we could not find a relationship between the contents of the notes and advice quality, we noted differences in note-taking approaches between the participants.

Melenhorst, Mark, Thea Van Der Geest And Micha√el Steehouder. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication (2005). Articles>Editing>Quality

Quality and Information Product Development  

Quality is defined as customer satisfaction, and an information product can be online or paper. With this in mind, basic steps in developing one kind of quality information product – online help – include: determine contents in terms of resources and user needs, develop a style guide, develop a prototype, test and redesign, and be open to change. It is easy to adapt these steps to apply to any information product. Quality is even further assured by placing these steps into a quality improvement process model context that includes identifying outputs, determining customers and customer requirements, converting requirements into processes, measuring outputs, and evaluating results.

Evans, Jeanette P. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Information Design>Quality

Quality for Customers' Sake

Executives as well as customers demand quality from technical communicators. However, the requirements of both groups seem hard to combine: Executives want quality to be achieved inside the company by applying quality standards without causing any delay or additional costs. Establishing customer-based quality, on the other hand, usually demands extra money and extra time. Nevertheless both demands can and should be utilized for developing a user-oriented quality system.

Bock, Gabriele. TC-FORUM (1999). Articles>User Centered Design>Quality

Quality in Action: What Technical Communicators Are Doing to Improve Quality  

Quality continues to be a hot topic among technical communicators, generating vigorous debate and commentary on the STC Quality SIG listserv and in notes to the Quality SIG manager in response to articles in the SIG newsletter or on the SIG website. Some common themes of interest include: how to measure quality, what role technical communicators can play in the ISO 9000 documentation process, how to reduce rework and minimize errors in documentation by developing flexible plans and processes, and how the STC value-added research can help us develop quality metrics for our information.

Colvin, Richard D., Ted Dennison, Lori H. Fisher, Don Lenk and Ralph Robinson. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>TC>Quality>ISO 9000

Quality in Technical Communication: Do We Need to Rethink the Concept?

Technical communicators have always been proud of the quality of their work. Can it be that we are overdoing it? Do we need to change our understanding of what we do? Is readiness to compromise and economize to keep pace more important today than perfecting our work?

Giammona, Barbara A. TC-FORUM (2001). Articles>TC>Quality

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

Quality Measurement Examples from a Document Quality Formula  

Managers of technical publications require quantitative measures of quality for their organizations' products. The Project on Writing Quality at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute produced an experimental formula that measures some indicators of quality in technical writing, such as logical relationships in procedural material and human agents as sentence subjects.

Hunter, Claudia M. STC Proceedings (1994). Articles>Writing>Quality

Quality Measurement for Documentation: Different Tools for Different Needs  

The world of technical communication continues to search for a reliable information metric that is easy to apply and widely accepted. Although that goal eludes us for the moment, we can make a choice among competing metrics based on an understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, and appropriateness for different audiences. Two kinds of metrics, ordinal scale metrics and surface feature metrics, seem to meet many of our needs. The differences between them lie in their choice of measurements and the methods of applying the measurements.

Hunter, Claudia M. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Documentation>Quality>Assessment

Quality PIC Progression: What Technical Communicators Want to Know About Quality  

This progression is sponsored by the STC Quality Professional Interest Committee. Each subgroup within the Quality PIC is sponsoring a discussion table, with additional topics of special interest to technical communicators. These topics have been selected based on their timeliness and practical value to practicing technical communicators.

Fisher, Lori H., Connie 'CJ.' Bibus, Laura J. Cinat, William D. Gearhart, Kathleen J. Hansen, Donald S. Lenk, Jr., David Robbins, Karl L. Smart, Thomas A. Vallar Susanne Warren and Diane L. Whitmer. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>TC>Quality

Quality Resources on the Web  

Karl Smart highlights several Web sites about quality and quality issues that technical communicators may want to browse.

Smart, Karl L. Intercom (2000). Articles>Information Design>Quality>Assessment

Quality SIG STC Bibliography

This bibliography was compiled through January 2004 by Don Lenk. Entries reviewed in STC publications, or about which someone provided a personal observation, are annotated.

Lenk, Donald S. Jr. STC Quality SIG (2004). Articles>Bibliographies>Quality

Recognizing Quality Achievement  

Smart summarizes the history and purpose of the Malcolm Baldridge Award. Given annually by the National Institute for Standards and Technology, the Baldridge Award recognizes companies that show an organization-wide concern for improving quality.

Smart, Karl L. Intercom (2001). Articles>TC>Quality

Robert Pirsig’s Message for Documentation Quality  

Teachers of technical communication frequently recommend that their students read Robert Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974) for his views on the complex relationships between technology and human values. As a former technical writer, Pirsig also offers some useful advice about Quality and its relation to the usability of technical documentation. Revisiting Pirsig’s works, including the more recently published Lila (1991), reveals concepts about Quality in documentation that are especially relevant to the usability testing of the documentation for today’s rapidly evolving technologies. This paper examines Pirsig’s views on the some of the characteristics of effective technical communication, and it offers advice to educators and trainers for incorporating Pirsig’s concepts about Quality into their teaching of techniques for the usability testing, and hence quality, of user documentation.

Shirk, Henrietta Nickels and Howard T. Smith. STC Proceedings (1998). Articles>Documentation>Quality>Technical Writing

The Role of the Technical Communicator in Quality Programs: A Case Study  

Most companies are trying to improve their products, services, and processes. As a result, numerous buzzwords are flying around these days: TQM, ISO 9000, IEEE, SEI, standards, procedures, methodologies, models, registration, and compliance. How can the technical communicator assist in the assessment and selection of a quality program and policy? This paper takes a look at the steps the Telecommunications division of Carnegie Group, Inc. (CGI) took to establish its quality program and the role of the technical communicator in this process.

Cerroni, Karen A. STC Proceedings (1994). Careers>TC>Quality>Standards

STC Quality PIC Progression  

This progression is sponsored by the STC Quality Professional Interest Committee. Each subgroup within the Quality PIC is sponsoring a discussion table, with additional topics of special interest to technical communicators. These topics have been selected based on their timeliness and practical value to practicing technical communicators.

Fisher, Lori H., Donald S., Lenk, Jr, Ted Dennison, David Robbins, Richard D. Colvin, Connie 'C.J.' Bibus and Ralph E. Robinson. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>TC>Quality>Professionalism