Between the Lines, newsletter of the Southwestern Ohio Chapter of STC, has a feature in the November, 2007 issue on “Wikis and informal learning,” with an account of a workplace learning strategy involving use of a wiki and other web services. Links in the article lead to additional ideas.
by Ann L. Wiley, STC Fellow, QPI SIG Founder
Hospitals have a range of activities focused on ensuring and improving safety, efficiency, effectiveness, timeliness, access, and satisfaction. A quality management system ensures comprehensive and integrated effort leading to desired results. Such a system is highly dependent on data, reporting, documentation, and continual learning. This article describes selecting and implementing a quality management system in a hospital and includes the following: (more…)
by Sharon Lynn, Manager QPI SIG
Does anyone have an opinion or an interest in discussing or solving this problem?
What if my company built a power plant 20 years ago for X Company and now they come to us and say they want up to update the facility?
We don’t know where to find the plans for that 20-year-old plant. In addition, X Company was bought out by another company and now goes by another name.
What can we do today to prevent this from happening 20 years from now? How do we store information today (CADD and Word and other files) so that we can retrieve it 20 years from now?
Also, are there other questions like this that we might discuss this year?
Our resources for CMMI (Capability Maturity Model Integration) include work by QPI SIG member Don Butterfield and two basic references. This has been reposted from a May, 2006 entry. To add information please leave a comment. (more…)
On August 18, 2006, Kaye Adkins, Associate Professor of English/Technical Communication at Missouri Western State University, asked the Policies and Procedures SIG email list of STC for advice about what skills the students in the senior-level course titled “Technical Documentation and Editing” should learn to prepare them for writing policies and procedures, and what she could do in the course that would prepare students for the job market. What workplace and writing issues should students be introduced to?
Chris Whalley, member of the Puget Sound chapter and the Policies and Procedures and Single Sourcing SIGs replied. (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.
The July 2006 IDeaL newsletter of the Instructional Design and Learning SIG was published yesterday, and IDL SIG membership manager Sylvia Miller recounts a story from Dot Champlin, in Dot’s own words, about a play produced this spring in Rochester, New York by the Rochester Section of the American Society for Quality, with a lot of help from STC members!
“Some of our (Rochester Chapter) STC members are also members of the American Society for Quality (ASQ). Last year, the ASQ members had expressed an interest in changing the pace of their yearly conference from the usual Keynote/Sessions format. So this year, the conference chair (Amy Friend), a dual STC/ASQ member, asked an STC member (Lori Marra), who has a serious interest in play writing, to write a little play that would illustrate the basic principles of quality for the enjoyment of the attendees. She agreed, and we presented the play at the local ASQ conference in April. (more…)
by Wanda Phillips, Senior Member, Canada West Coast and Puget Sound chapters and QPI SIG
I’ve been working on my Six Sigma Green Belt for a year now. The training is through my employer, Philips (Ultrasound and Monitoring), and my manager selected the project. It turns out to be a huge project with the potential for incredible savings and increased reliability. As a Green Belt, I’m expected to also keep up with my writing workload. (more…)
by Rod Ward, Member Australia Chapter and QPI SIG
I’ve provided a zip file you can download, containing a typical Visio file of a navigable business process, created according to the methodology I outlined in “How to build an interactive flowchart with Visio.” This is a version of a Visio file that I did for a client, with all the references to the client removed. This process is a Workplace Hazard Management Process. There is another more complex one for handling actual safety incidents (where someone gets hurt or real damage occurs) and it has at least three levels, but this one shows the basic idea just as well. (more…)
by Rod Ward, Member Australia Chapter and QPI SIG
This article is based on a post by Rod on the Information Design and Architecture SIG list on June 12, 2006 and appears by Rod’s permission.
There are any number of tools that can be used to build an interactive visual document with links to more detailed information. To build a flowchart of this kind, Visio (2003) is effective and especially useful because it is standard on corporate software lists and therefore easy for others to edit and update.
Recently I used Visio’s Cross-functional Flowchart wizard to build multi-page swim lane diagrams of complex organisational processes, and then inserted hyperlinks on action shapes to link out to web page content residing on an intranet and in my client’s corporate SAP Knowledge Warehouse. (more…)
Process improvement efforts pervade every sector of society today, and not for profit organizations are no exception. In STC, the Quality and Process Improvement SIG is following a performance management system. This starts with tracking key measures related to satisfaction and retention of members, and growth.
Also tracked are performance in the stages of the Section Management Process of the American Society for Quality, and monthly performance against the STC Newsletter Competition Guidelines and the criteria for the STC Community Achievement Award.
Benchmarking started with looking for data on expectations for retaining members. This article applies: “Member Retention Key to Association Growth” The link was current in December 2005.
The Gartner Group plans a Business Process Management Summit June 27 to 28 2006 in London.
In January 2006 the Gartner CIO Survey showed Business Process Improvement is seen by CIOs as the number one business priority in 2006.
Therefore Gartner will be holding its first European BPM Summit, as a follow-on event to the American summit in June 2005.
According to Gartner, BPM is seen as a management discipline that can “subsume” Six Sigma and Lean techniques. Organizations new to BPM should implement initiatives across the organization rather than in “silos” at a tactical level. BPM helps organizations compete on the basis of superior business process, leading to reduction in inefficiency, errors, duplication of standards and work, complexity, and risk and improved factual reporting, agility, alignment, productivity, and compliance.
The scope of the summit is reported with registration information on the Gartner site.
The effect of process improvement on innovation is a frequent topic of discussion. The Wharton School published an article on the subject. Do you have any other references or experience in this area? How can communication contribute to continuing improvement and fostering innovation? Please leave a comment.
The article is:
“Do Process Management Programs Discourage Innovation?” Published November 2005. Link current, April 2006.
A list of basic resources on Sarbanes-Oxley follows. If you have information to add, please leave a comment.
Scott Green. Manager’s Guide to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act: Improving Internal Controls to Prevent Fraud. ISBN 0-471-56975-5. 2004.
Guy P. Lander. What is Sarbanes-Oxley? McGraw-Hill. 2004.Sarbanes-Oxley Act Forum. Link current August 2005.
Sarbanes-Oxley Financial and Accounting Disclosure Information. Link current August 2005.
Quality blog: Sarbanes-Oxley. Link current December 2005.
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