Tom Johnson and Paul Pehrson posted recently about our team design reviews. These have started to turn into what we might call project reviews. In our team meetings, we usually brief each other on what we’re working on. In these project reviews, a couple of team members will go into more detail about their projects.
Going beyond the design review idea, where we would demonstrate our deliverables and get feedback, we also talk about the challenges we’re facing and receive suggestions for managing those challenges.
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Tags:
design reviews,
project management,
single sourcing,
technical communication
Thursday night, Collin Turner gave a presentation on screencasting to the International Chapter of STC. He talked about best practices from planning to delivery of a screencast. He mentioned in passing that as technical communicators, we’re also project managers.
I’ve never thought of myself as a project manager, but I suppose that’s one of the hats I wear. Usually, I would think of the tech comm project manager as the one who has become the leader of a team and directs their efforts to produce and deliver content. I work in a bit of an isolated environment when it comes to my projects, meaning that I don’t collaborate with other writers on my content beyond asking for content reviews or opinions on usage. I’m the only one who writes documentation for the development projects I work on.
But I suppose I’m still a project manager in a sense because every documentation set consists of one or more projects. An online help system or animated demonstration is in itself a project. I’m responsible for the planning, development, and delivery of each one, moving it through from concept to reality.
Personally, however, I’m something of a loner. I like to manage and implement the deliverables myself. I hear about projects where multiple writers have to worry about source control. The skilled project managers are the ones who can help the writers work on a source-controlled project without blocking each other’s progress. Fortunately, the projects I work on are not large enough to need thousands of pages of documentation. In fact, I work on multiple projects simultaneously, so we’re not approaching the need for a full team any time soon.
Tags:
project management,
technical communication,
technical writing
A few months ago I posted seven reasons an organization needs technical communicators. This week, a program manager I work with provided a few more ways that technical writers provide value to organizations and projects, so I wanted to pass along his wisdom—with my own discussion, of course. Because I gave seven reasons before, I’ll start with number eight.
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Tags:
documentation,
program management,
project management,
software documentation,
team management,
technical communication,
technical writing
Our team has been putting together some plans for a day out of the office. I’m not talking about taking a day off and getting together as a team to see a movie, but rather going somewhere to talk strategy and best practices. We’ll be working, but it will be a laid back, day-long discussion and brainstorming session.
Why not just have a meeting in a conference room? Even have the caterers bring in lunch? Because sometimes, it’s helpful to get in a different environment even for one day for a fresh perspective on things. In my opinion, if you spend day after day without any changes, you’re less stimulated. Your brain runs the same circles, and it’s hard to take a fresh approach.
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Tags:
project management,
team management
If you’re in the business of developing and selling products that are in any way technical in nature, you probably spend most of your time planning or implementing specifications, development and release schedules, budgets, and engineering strategies. Or you may be directly involved in the day-to-day development and testing of the product. Whatever your role, the product is the most important thing. After all, if there’s no product, there’s no business.
In all of the things you have to think about, have you thought about bringing a technical communicator into your team? The realm of technical communication involves many job types, but in this particular context, I’m talking about a technical communicator who produces documentation that is intended to be distributed to the product’s end users. That documentation may take the form of online help or other Web documents or printed documents. Sure, a tech communicator may be another body taking up project budget, but here are seven reasons you should work a technical communication team member into your budget and project plan.
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Tags:
documentation,
engineering,
project management,
project planning,
quality assurance,
technical communication
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