TITLE: The Documentation Process: Create It, Refine It, and Get Them to Use It

KEYWORDS: documentation, management, process, culture

LEADER: Bill Thomas

AFFILIATION: Software Engineering Institute, Carnegie Mellon University

CONTACT PERSON: Bill Thomas

CONTACT EMAIL: wrt@sei.cmu.edu

LENGTH: Half-day

TIME: Sunday, October 21, 2001; 8:30a -- 12:00p. 

ABSTRACT:

With a well-defined and managed process for developing documents, your technical communication department can consistently produce high-quality publications. You can create accurate budgets and schedules, and respond to changes while keeping projects on track. In short, you can set your clients’ expectations, and then meet or exceed those expectations.

Without a process, you might still deliver a high-quality publication. You might even get it out on time and on budget—but only through your own personal heroics and the heroics of your staff members. And you will have great difficulty sustaining that performance from project to project.

To consistently provide excellent service and add value to an organization, TC departments must develop and refine documentation processes that work for their organizations, and then find ways to institutionalize those processes so that they become part of the culture, without requiring enforcement and mandates from upper management.

This half-day tutorial will explore the subject of developing and institutionalizing a documentation process. Topics will include:

•  What are the components of a sustainable documentation process?
•  How can those components be tailored to the organization?
•  How can TC departments build relationships that encourage organizational support of the department and its members?
•  What tools can make the process more usable?
•  How can the department climb the ladder of capability maturity so that high-quality, process-driven work is self-sustaining?
•  How can the department enhance its organizational knowledge and continuously improve?

Among the examples used will be the documentation process employed by the technical communication department of the Software Engineering Institute, home of the Capability Maturity Models for software and systems development. We will also discuss the Capability Maturity Model approach as a method for improving a TC department, and that department’s stature within the organization, using a major financial services firm as an example.

Participants will receive example forms, templates, and other documentation to help them develop and institutionalize a documentation-development process at their own organizations.

THIS TUTORIAL IS CANCELED

Last modified October 28, 2001 by Scott Tilley.