Outsourcing technical writing reduces the time technical staff spend on communications (writing, editing, management, and coordination), thereby expanding overall department and staff productivity by freeing staff to focus in areas where they are specifically trained and primarily interested. Outsourcing technical writing and technical editing services is most cost-effective and prudent when one or more of the following conditions exist: Documentation will be highly visible with
Continue Reading →If you’re coaching a new documentation manager to succeed, start by establishing guiding principles. These principles become the solid foundation on which you can build trust. A trusting relationship enables a documentation manager to cultivate loyalty, extract maximum effort from others, and encourage teamwork. Groom your documentation managers to evolve into dynamic leaders by helping them develop these four skills and attitudes: The ability to
Continue Reading →Global survey issued by Serena Software shows that agile projects are working well enough, but could be better. The survey also reveals that communication is today’s biggest agile challenge and continuous delivery is a hot, trending topic. The three key themes that came out of the survey include: Agile is doing well enough, but could be better: The survey shows that agile development practices are still not widely
Continue Reading →There have been endless debates about Agile vs Waterfall development methodologies in the software circles and they have always evoked strong emotions. Some say, Agile is in and Waterfall is passe whereas some say agile cannot be used for large software projects with 3-4 year release cycles. Whatever be the case, Agile is here to stay and Waterfall is not dead yet Agile software development represents
Continue Reading →Yes, if they are not focused and structured well. The key question here is, “Why are we doing sprint retrospectives anyway?” Is it because it’s mentioned in some top-notch Agile book? Is it because the Scrum Master wants it? Is it because it’s as mandatory as daily stand up? Is it because the tech writer did not get inputs for documentation and here’s an opportunity
Continue Reading →In agile development, an user story represents a small piece of business value that an agile team can deliver in an iteration. User stories are usually written as one or two sentences in the everyday language of the user. User stories are written by the Product Owner, with the help of the agile team. Once written, they are placed in the Product Backlog and prioritized,
Continue Reading →Scrum is a simple agile framework for completing projects. Scrum derives it approach from the game of Rugby where the whole team “tries to go the distance as a unit, passing the ball back and forth”. Scrum as compared to the traditional sequential approaches is a holistic approach, in which the phases strongly overlap and the whole process is performed by one cross-functional team across
Continue Reading →There’s lot of buzz about agile – agile methodology, agile teams, agile marketing, agile leadership, and so on. So what is Agile? Simply put, it is an iterative and incremental (evolutionary) approach to software development which is performed in a highly collaborative manner by self-organizing teams within an effective governance framework, with “just enough” ceremony, that produces high quality solutions, in a cost effective and
Continue Reading →The cardinal rule of technical writing is, “Know thy user”. And yet, so many of the writers I encounter have limited exposure to their audiences. Have you categorized your users into end-user, database admin, or system admin? Have you tried to understand the sales guy who is interested in the weekly and monthly sales report that is available as a canned report in your system
Continue Reading →Mentoring is a powerful tool in the career development process. In this post, we examine what organizations can do to encourage mentoring as an employee development technique. Mentoring relationship is a mutual agreement between two people- the mentor and the mentee. Mentor is usually an experienced professional who nurtures the career of a less experienced professional – the mentee. Technical writers can benefit greatly from
Continue Reading →