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As your manager, I need to be able to come to you and say "Change of
plan...the GUI is late, but the Single Sign-On feature is ahead of
schedule. Let me know by this afternoon what impacts this change is
going to have so I can report it to the manager's status conference call."
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Exactly. This is being pro-active and flexible and balanced (as opposed to
re-active and caught off guard and quite possibly felled like an oak).
Processes are not _how_ we do things, they are _what_ we do and _when_ we do
it. Policies are _why_ we do those things we do and _who_ says we should.
Instructions take care of the _how_.
The most complex process can be mapped quite simply with a "Start" ("In")
and an "End" ("Out") and a "Something Happens" in between. I never, ever
start a SME documentation team meeting with a blank page: there's a "start"
at the upper left corner and an "end" at the bottom right. Blank pages are
very intimidating to non-writers; "in" and "out" might be accurate but they
are too biological for many people's comfort.
Once a process is mapped (flowcharted), it's quite easy to identify
stakeholders and potential bottlenecks (wherever your process interacts with
somebody else's process), and it's easy to estimate time and resource
requirements. I use a 3-part box for process pieces; top = who does it,
middle = what gets done, bottom = doc # for more details (related
form/illustration/other process/instruction).
And managers l-o-v-e pictures. Gantt charts are another of my favorite
tools for objective-setting. I always include
percentage-of-project-completion milestones.
They do like those percentages, too.
Dori Green
Technical Writer, QMS Project
Associated Brands, Inc.
Medina, NY Facility
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