DocQment

Business Week Online has published a list of the best product ideas of 2006, with a slide show of 108 of the these designated best ideas.

Highlights include Sun Microsystems User Centered Design Group’s Design Strategy for the the x4100 family of rack-mounted servers, and a small tent that opens in two seconds–someone throws it in the air and it lands ready to use. Tear down takes 15 seconds.

There are innovative products for people who are blind, and many other designs as well.

Fixed documents, blogs, and wikis have limitations for management of policy documents in organizations, says Jon Garfunkel of Boston, http://civilities.net/.

Garfunkel has worked to develop the next generation system for documentation that changes continually and is updated collaboratively. He calls the website for this work a “civ,” and has been using Drupal as the basis.

Garfunkel calls the overall project Constructive Media and reports how to apply the method to management of policies in the enterprise.

STC President Paula Berger sends a monthly news message to all members after the Board’s monthly conference call–new this year.

These newsletters, reports prepared for the Board meetings, and the summary slides prepared for monthly Board teleconferences are posted for members at http://www.stc.org/stcmembers/boardNews01.asp

Director Cindy Currie helps us get ready for a great new STC year in her September column, published in Hyperviews Online.

Growth of the QPI SIG continues at a rapid pace. During the past year we have been the fastest growing SIG.

If you are a member, I hope you will take a moment and leave a comment to let us know what your expectations are as a member of the SIG. What do you want to learn about? Are there projects you’d like to see done, or work on?

Sharon Lynn and Elizabeth McQueen forwarded the proposals received by the QPI SIG for the progression at the annual conference to Rachel Houghton, who is insorporating them in the proposal for the Online SIG progression. The proposals related to accessibility and software development, and a document log in a Sharepoint system.

Sharon and Elizabeth continue to plan for annual conference activities, and we will be cooperating with other SIGs in various ways. If you are planning to attend the conference and make a presentation please let us know.

Development of a customer satisfaction measurement survey for the QPI SIG is tentatively scheduled to begin in November, provided we can find a way to administer the survey. This is being discussed on the STC Forum.

We continue to post information about publications standards on the STC Forum and to support members in finding information on standards. Subscribe to the RSS feed from the Forum to see information as it is posted.

Please welcome our 34 new members who joined in August. As of August 31 the QPI SIG had 960 members and STC had 15,202 members.

A total of 86 applications were filed for the 2006 US Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Awards. This is an increase over last year’s 64 applications.

This year the new nonprofit category has 10 applications. There are also:

• three manufacturing applications
• four service applications
• eight small business applications
• 45 healthcare applications
• 16 education applications

The QPI SIG has published extensive quotes on the subject of quality.

The QPI SIG published a bibliography by Don Lenk on the subject of quality through 2004. Now the QPI SIG posts short bibliographies and listings in the “Resources” category continually.

The SIG has a list of related organizations, presently on our static site. We are also adding posts in the category of Related Organizations.

The QPI SIG has a Conferences and courses page with ongoing educational opportunities listed and an archival listing of events. If you wish to announce a quality-related event, please send the information to the SIG Manager (contact information). Please provide the month, day, and year; name of the event; location; and URL for more information in that order.

The Online SIG has an extensive events calendar related to all areas of technical communication and is posting more events on http://stc-on.org/online. If you wish to announce a technical communication event, please post there.

by Amy S. Friend BB, CQM, Senior Member Rochester Chapter STC

This is part 2 of a series: Revel in Your Discomfort: Living With Change. An earlier version of these articles was published in the Proof Sheet newsletter of the Rochester Chapter of STC, beginning in November, 1996.

In Part 1 I wrote about Tannenbaum’s Change Continuum. Robert Tannenbaum explains that every change is perceived as either superficial, incremental, continuous, or transformational. Two different people may perceive (or classify) the same change differently depending on their experience, gender, ethnic background, or other personal history. How we experience change has more to do with us than with the change. This month’s article will focus more on the personal side of change. (more…)

Recently STC members have informally recommended the following resources.

The Art of Constructive Confrontation by Hoover and DiSilvestro
(http://www.constructiveconfrontation.com/)

The Fast Forward MBA in Project Management by Eric Verzuh

Fundamentals of Project Management by James P. Lewis

A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge 3rd ed., published by the Project Management Institute (PMI)

Managing Information Technology Projects by Dick Billows GCA (http://www.4PM.com)

Managing Your Documentation Projects by JoAnn Hackos

Project Management Jump Start by Kim Heldman

Project Management Memory Jogger from GOAL QPC

The Project Office by Thomas R. Block and J. Davidson Frame

In the current posted issue of the The Rockley Bulletin, Ann Rockley reviews Document Engineering: Analyzing and Designing Documents for Business Informatics and Web Services (ISBN-10:0-262-07261-0; The MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts), by Robert Glushko and Tim McGrath. The summary states that the authors “explore the document as an interface to business and provide a common sense approach to modeling both documents and services for information exchange.

“Their message is clear: To succeed in the 21st century global economy, companies need to ‘fundamentally rethink what they do and how they do it.’ And what better place to start than with the document?”"

Visit the The Rockley Bulletin to read the whole article.

IBM (formerly Rational) RequisitePro is a powerful tool for writing software requirements.

This tool is most effective when you are managing hundreds of requirements. Authors write with MS Word, and the requirements become part of a database which provides flexibility in retrieval and reporting.

stpBA Storyboarding integrates requirements management with diagramming of task flows and specifications. It can be used as a standalone tool, or integrated with IBM RequisitePro.

Omnigroup has a suite of tools for the Macintosh. OmniOutliner is the application for writing requirements, and it integrates with OmniGraffle, a popular visualization tool.

The Confluence Wiki is being used for collaborative work, including writing requirements.