Successful Documentation Projects – Part 3 of 3 – ‘Writing’

Written by Glenn Murray


Continued from page 1

Managing change

It’s important that you minimiserepparttar impact of changes torepparttar 107162 product and/or development schedule. To do this, you need to develop a technique which:

1.Identifiesrepparttar 107163 change 2.Estimatesrepparttar 107164 impact in time and/or resources * 3.Informsrepparttar 107165 project manager

* You can userepparttar 107166 same estimating techniques as you used earlier inrepparttar 107167 project.

Tracking writing progress

It is important to note thatrepparttar 107168 writing stage is not simply about writing. If you track your progress at every step alongrepparttar 107169 way, you’ll be able to see whether you will meet your milestones and deadlines, and you’ll also be able to use this project as a learning experience… to better planrepparttar 107170 next one. (You should ensure that all project records are easily accessible for ongoing maintenance and future project reference.)

You should trackrepparttar 107171 time taken to perform every step outlined in this procedure as well as each draft stage, review times, total turnaround times, etc.

Conducting regular team meetings

In order to keep all team members informed of writing progress, you should conduct regular team meetings. These meetings should be a forum for taking a look at your tracking metrics and discussingrepparttar 107172 estimated percentage complete forrepparttar 107173 various topics currently under way. Ifrepparttar 107174 estimated percentage complete is lower than it should be givenrepparttar 107175 time already spent, then you can act on it. These meetings allow you to identify hitches inrepparttar 107176 writing progress.

Writing progress reports

Your management also need to be kept informed ofrepparttar 107177 status ofrepparttar 107178 project. You should write periodic progress reports outlining:

•Whererepparttar 107179 project is at •What you’ve done overrepparttar 107180 last month •What you plan to do overrepparttar 107181 next month •Any issues you’ve encountered Manage Production

The meaning of “production” varies depending on what kind of documentation you’re working on and whorepparttar 107182 audience is. It can encompass such things as:

•Printing •Binding •Product build (whenrepparttar 107183 help is compiled intorepparttar 107184 product)

Althoughrepparttar 107185 production stage generally only requires management, you still need to spend a fair bit of time on proofing and liaising with production people.

Evaluaterepparttar 107186 Project

The purpose ofrepparttar 107187 evaluation stage is to consider:

•Didrepparttar 107188 project go according to plan? •Why? / Why not? •How individual team members contributed torepparttar 107189 overall project. •Howrepparttar 107190 project manager performed. •Whetherrepparttar 107191 documentation achieved its goals.

Your tracking metrics will come in handy during this stage; if there were any flaws inrepparttar 107192 project progress, they should go some way towards identifying them. You might also userepparttar 107193 sample evaluation report provided by Hackos in Managing Your Documentation Projects by Hackos (1994), pp.514-518.

Is your documentation successful?

Now that you’ve written and releasedrepparttar 107194 documentation, you need to determine whether it has achieved your goals. The only way to accurately do this is to conduct further user research.

TIP: For details on research methods, take a look at Managing Your Documentation Projects by Hackos (1994), User and Task Analysis for Interface Design by Hackos & Redish (1998), Social Marketing: New Imperative for Public Health by Manoff (1985), Designing Qualitative Research 2nd Edition by Marshall & Rossman (1995), and “Conducting Focus Groups – A Guide for First-Time Users”, in Marketing Intelligence and Planning by Tynan & Drayton (1988).

And that’s it! Remember, this process is an ‘ideal’ process. Takerepparttar 107195 bits that suit you and your project, and leaverepparttar 107196 bits that don’t.

Good luck!

* Glenn Murray is an advertising copywriter and heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com for further details or more FREE articles.




Basic Diagnosis Guidelines for Your PC

Written by Priyanka Agarwal


Continued from page 1

Ifrepparttar error messages orrepparttar 107161 recent history of your PC doesn’t provide much information to you, you have to explore your PC in some ofrepparttar 107162 following ways:

1. Scan you system for viruses, Trojan horses, spywares or other malwares.

2. Use a Process Explorer (freeware program) tool. Windows Task Manager shows which processes and files are currently being used and how much memory they are using, but some process names aren’t clear. Process Explorer not only gives all this information to you but also tells you which application started a process and which resources that particular application is currently using. It also has a potent search capability that quickly shows which processes have particular handles opened or DLLs loaded so that you can close any unwanted application. Process Explorer works on Windows 9x/Me, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Server 2003, and 64-bit versions of Windows for x64 processors.

3. Go throughrepparttar 107163 error log file created by Dr Watson. Dr. Watson is a program that is used to help detect, debug, and log errors that are encountered while Windows or Windows programs are running. It automatically creates a text file when an error is detected. When running Windows 2000repparttar 107164 error is logged underrepparttar 107165 file "drwtsn32.log" or "user.dmp", and when running Microsoft Windows 95, 98 or MErepparttar 107166 file is logged with a .WLG file extension and stored underrepparttar 107167 WindowsDrwatson or Documents and SettingsAll UsersDocumentsDrWatson folder.

4. If you are having a networking-related problem you can use a Network Diagnostics system utility tool. You can run various tests using this so that it can collect different types of information. It scans your system to see whether you have network connectivity, and whether or not your network-related programs and services are running.

By going through these basic procedures hopefully you will find out what’s troubling your PC, and once that is known you can commence treatment.

Source of reference: www.microsoft.com

Priyanka Agarwal http://www.m6.net Hosting webhelpers


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