Becoming a Manager ? Managing Technical Documentation

I came across this tasty blog this morning and checked out an excerpt of the authors pending book, Becoming a Manager. He manages documentation and teaches others about managing documentation, but you may infer, it's about a lot more than that. I see a reflection of people, process, and technology, so I thought I would pass it along! (Thanks Mr. Hamilton for publishing your blog!.) --Kate

Becoming a Manager ? Managing Technical Documentation: "My biases are reasonably conventional. I believe in light-weight processes, but thorough planning. I believe in treating writers like adult human beings, who in nearly every case know how to do their jobs better than I do. I believe in hiring the smartest and hardest working people I can find. I believe the most important function of a manager is to set up an environment where writers can be productive; an environment where writers are respected, given the tools they need, shielded from interference from the corporation and its managers (including me), and left alone to do their jobs."

Move to SOA can be rewarding for companies, users say

Starting from scratch is one thing. Thinking from scratch and leveraging what you have is another. I makes sense really. Consider what you want, then consider what you have that can solve those needs. with the remaining gap, start planning how to fill it, considering future expansion, flexibility, and in a nutshell, evolution. Computerworld January 2007 discusses how the SOA framwork can be part of that solution:

Move to SOA can be rewarding for companies, users say: "January 30, 2007 (Computerworld) -- SAN DIEGO -- For many companies, the move to a service-oriented architecture (SOA) can yield substantial rewards, including reduced operating costs and better customer service. But those benefits only show up after companies work through thorny problems like obtaining executive buy-in, shifting the way development groups operate and hammering out sometimes contentious new business rules, according to users at The Open Group's Enterprise Architecture Practitioners Conference here.

...company has tapped SOA to help shorten development times and pull more value from legacy systems.

'One of the primary benefits of SOA is to get our solutions to market faster and anticipate and respond to competitive threats quicker,' Whitridge said. 'We're not taking SOA as a rip-and-replace strategy. We're trying to figure out how to use what we have and enhance it.'"

Transition Planning

When planning your transition to the new world, please keep in mind that not only may you change systems and processes, but how people think (about how they do business and how they can do business.) You have seen recent changes. People are learning about new ideas from friends, kids, andoverheard at the local coffee shop. You witness some of these changes happening in your own work place. You know the time is ripe. How do you get everyone on board?

Community Buy-in

You've done the hard part. You secured top-down buy-in from your senior executives. Now how do you manage the transitions among the ranks? How do you know you will succeed? See how this strategy might work for you and refine as needed:

• exec support


• ownership, responsibility, accountability


• examine and refine process first


• examine, categorize, & refine business rules in detail


• identify gaps between current state and future state


• assess integration points - how will you integrate existing with new frameworks?


• thought leadership - organizational change - community building - shared data, shared ideas, shared business goals

These are just a few ideas to consider. In what ways do you reach out to your middle managers and community? How do they become part of the keys to change? How do you embrace change?

Welcome to March. First Quarter is coming to a close. How will the rest of the year bring success?
Kate

Business Process Management (BPM) - Best Practices in Business Process Management

Business Process Management (BPM) - Best Practices in Business Process Management:

"# Successfully determining business requirements

# Determining required organizational change tactics

# Involving key project stake holders to ensure ease of deployment

# Mapping business strategies to business process"

Time to Change Change Management - Weigh In - weighin - CIO

Time to Change Change Management - Weigh In - weighin - CIO: "Modifying a key operational process requires designing new workflows, defining new roles and responsibilities, collecting different data, managing service levels, acting on feedback from dashboards and integrating disparate databases. Afford your operational processes the same attention and formality that you afford a business application but also expect your IT staff to struggle when it comes to designing their own internal processes."

Above, Thad Hunter discusses changing the change management process itself.

TOOLS: Ajaxload - Ajax loading gif generator

A Tool from AJAXLOAD.INFO

Ajaxload - Ajax loading gif generator: "Create easily your own ajax loader icon :

1. Select the type of indicator you want
2. Enter the background code color you want
(tick 'Transparent background' if you don't want one
3. Enter the foreground code color you want

Press 'Generate it'"

Business Process Management (BPM) - Selecting the Best Method for Process Baselining

Business Process Improvement (BPI)

Baselining the business process may be done with subject matter experts, business analyst 1-on-1 interviews, by group collaboration, or a combination. Below, the Business Process Management institute highlights the collaborative effort. By following the link tot he article, an additional table of pros and cons is provided.

Business Process Management (BPM) - Selecting the Best Method for Process Baselining: "Group Collaboration

Group collaboration involves bringing a group of 8-15 subject matter experts together with a skilled facilitator to build the process baseline. The facilitator may be the Project Manager, Quality Lead or an external resource. The key is that they are proficient in leading a group to build the necessary process models. An experienced facilitator will also be able to serve as a neutral process guide, manage group dynamics, surface discrepancies and bring them to resolution, and track outstanding issues."

Pros of group collaboration are clear - immediate discussion and agreement may be reached, brainstorming is enhanced, and joint ownership of what's happening and what's missed.

Cons, in addition to potential lack of detail or issue, include high simultaneous resource involvement, additional planning and advance scheduling, as well as limited processes that can be handled at one session:

High resource involvement. 8 to 15 people will be focused on this, and only this, effort for 1 to 3 days.

Additional planning required. Holding a collaborative group working session requires a clear understanding of the scope of the processes involved so that the necessary players can be identified. Early scheduling must occur so that all parties are available to participate and rooms are reserved.

Limited to no more that 5 processes. Attempting to baseline more than 5 processes over 3 days isn’t feasible. There are ways to mitigate this limit – breakout groups or blending methods – but regardless there will be a limit for how much the brain can handle.

Techniques

Watch for disagreement. Pay attention to any side comments, facial expressions and actions. People may disagree with what’s being said but not want to speak up. Draw them out by asking what their experience has been for a particular task. By focusing on their experience or how they would handle a situation, creating a right, wrong or confrontational atmosphere can be avoided. People may be concerned with giving the ‘wrong answer’ and getting in trouble especially if they are concerned that their job will be eliminated. Be aware of the group dynamics and adjust your approach accordingly. If you sense information is being withheld or manipulated, set up another meeting with the individual.

Send questions out ahead of time. This will prevent people from feeling put on the spot and allow them to think through their answers to provide more accurate and detailed information. Ask them to bring samples of forms and other documents used.

Be respectful of people’s time. Control the flow of the meeting by having well-prepared questions, ensuring you have the right participants, and keeping people on target but allowing them to fully answer the question. Follow the rules for an effective meeting.

Use real scenarios. Make some of your questions in the form of scenarios and document how it would be handled. This may include demonstrating the tools used to complete the process. Ask for copies of training material or user manuals.

Process improvement: A Case Study in Revenue Generation Process Improvement

By: Sherri Adame, Senior Business Systems Analyst, Baxter Healthcare
Monday November 7, 2005

The case study identified a five-step plan was created:

• Identify the difficult business process
• Determine process improvements
• Identify and assign process owners
• Implement quick hits to improve processes
• Develop a plan for continuing process review

Business Process Analysis Versus Business Process Management, from Technology Evaluation Centers - Business White Papers, Webcasts and Case Studies -

Business process engineers should assist the masses in clarifying between Business Process Management, Business Process Analysis, and related concepts.

Business Process Analysis Versus Business Process Management, from Technology Evaluation Centers - Business White Papers, Webcasts and Case Studies - BNET.com: "Overview: Talking to end users reveals that there is confusion in the market regarding Business Process Analysis (BPA) and Business Process Management (BPM) suites. Vendors use the term BPM in a very broad way, but what are really the differences between BPA and BPM, and where does BPM come from?"

On Business Process Discovery, from BPM.com:

Business Process Management (BPM) is rapidly growing and becoming the technology for modeling, optimizing and automating business processes. A number of research reports and customer case studies have shown that BPM yields impressive bottom-line and top-line benefits to organizations trying to compete in a global economy. More.

Last August, BPM.com author Johnny Long wrote a two part series on a sometimes related topic, modernizing legacy applications.. discussions of business rules, automating conversion processes, and key components to legacy conversions:

Substantial automation of the process makes legacy transformation an economically attractive and low risk proposition compared to other modernization options such as rewriting or replacing the legacy application. Additionally some of the legacy code should not be converted because it may be obsolete or irrelevant to the modernized solution. An automated extraction process enables the organization to better understand unknown or poorly documented processes, as well as simplify complex logic constructs that have likely been developed over several years and by several developers.

One of the biggest challenges in a renewal exercise is to translate potentially meaningless code into well understood business terms. A key success actor to a legacy renewal project is to reorganize and rename the legacy components into meaningful business terms very early in the process. The translation of the legacy components can be conducted around a better understood component and data structure, thus significantly speeding the process.

Automation of the code extraction process significantly reduces the time and cost of identifying and documenting valuable business rules locked inside legacy code, enabling organizations to reuse their own intellectual property. Automating the conversion process reduces the risks of legacy code conversion by minimizing errors and reducing the resources needed for the modernization effort.

Another common phrase: BPI, or Business Process Improvement. You've done it many times, now see it organized in a book:

Business Process Improvement Workbook
H. James Harrington, K.C. Esseling, H. Van Nimwegen
Synopsis: This hands-on implementation guide is a companion and update to Harrington's "Business Process Improvement". It focuses on upgrading information distribution paths to optimize the many processes with which they come into contact. Featuring lists, charts and appendices, this workbook explains how to document a company's processes, analyze current effectiveness, design new processes and use system enablers.

CertMag.com Certification Road Maps: Managing Your Career Path

Aim High

Career Path Development

CertMag.com Certification Road Maps: Managing Your Career Path: "Career Transition 3: Enterprise-Wide Perspectives
The path to CIO or CTO is a culmination of hard work, integrity, passion for the profession, confidence and discipline. Those who choose to aim for these positions are generally well rewarded. In a recent survey in Baseline Magazine, 23 CIOs made $1 million or more last year. This demonstrates just how critical they are in today’s organizations. For these IT leaders, what’s needed is strong business acumen, excellent understanding of the company’s business and an ability to build strong relationships with the other CXO-level executives."

In 2004 I took the broad view and assessed business process across one division's IT oganization and facilitated the chosen business management controls and reporting functions as required by Sarbanes Oxley compliance initiatives.

In 2005, I delved deep into business requirements for producing significant time in the business process by upgrading key technology. Later I took a hands on look at wide area networks and detailed them under a microsocope.

This led me in 2006 to setting up the business process for gathering key information architecture assessing how business data traverses the enterprise. This was a key initiative blending infrastructure detail with business process engineering and project management. Initial milestones were reach successfully.

2007 leverages the last few years. I will tell you more when the time comes.

Best regards for advancement and victory in the year to come. May everyone recognize that the best success comes when every one succeeds together.

--Kate

CertMag.com Certification Road Maps: Managing Your Career Path

Career Path Development

Aim High

CertMag.com Certification Road Maps: Managing Your Career Path: "Career Transition 3: Enterprise-Wide Perspectives
The path to CIO or CTO is a culmination of hard work, integrity, passion for the profession, confidence and discipline. Those who choose to aim for these positions are generally well rewarded. In a recent survey in Baseline Magazine, 23 CIOs made $1 million or more last year. This demonstrates just how critical they are in today’s organizations. For these IT leaders, what’s needed is strong business acumen, excellent understanding of the company’s business and an ability to build strong relationships with the other CXO-level executives."

In 2004 I took the broad view and assessed business process across one division's IT oganization and facilitated the chosen business management controls and reporting functions as required by Sarbanes Oxley compliance initiatives.

In 2005, I delved deep into business requirements for producing significant time in the business process by upgrading key technology. Later I took a hands on look at wide area networks and detailed them under a microsocope.

This led me in 2006 to setting up the business process for gathering key information architecture assessing how business data traverses the enterprise. This was a key initiative blending infrastructure detail with business process engineering and project management. Initial milestones were reach successfully.

2007 leverages the last few years. I will tell you more when the time comes.

Best regards for advancement and victory in the year to come. May everyone recognize that the best success comes when every one succeeds together.

--Kate

About Telecommute Connecticut!

Telecommuting is supported by the CT DOT

It became clear to me this fall that telecommuting helps not only companies but the commuter traffic issues in downtown Hartford. The more telecommuting that is approved, the lighter the strain on CT's roads.

The Connecticut Department of Tansportation offers business management plans, executive guides and more!

About Telecommute Connecticut!: "Telecommute Connecticut! - a commuter service of the Connecticut Department of Transportation - is a comprehensive resource that helps employers design, implement and maintain a telecommuting program that enhances the bottom line and makes them the employer of choice.

Every member of the Telecommute Connecticut! consultant team is tops in their field, and their services are available to you at no charge. Click here to learn more about our experienced consultants.
We make the collective knowledge and talents of highly experienced professionals in the fields of training, human resources, computing, networking, telecommunications and more, available to your company. "

This year I discovered a great perk of a local healthcare company. With remote teams based in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Connecticut, does it make sense to spend hundreds of travel dollars weekly on commuting between offices?

This company stepped up and provides teleconferncing options to its employees and supports the use of laptop, VPN, secure instant messaging, and remote teamwork. Employees can start work earlier, and work later, while arranging family and personal needs with those of the company.

How does your Hartford area company reduce transporation issues?

--Kate

10 Signs That Your SEO Is a Quack ? HRA - Jill Whalen

Author and mentor Jill Whalen of HighRankings.com has provided a list of Top 10 signs that your SEO is a Quack. As a person who's been around the web since iVillage was in it's infancy, search engine sites came from data mining programs, and ICQ had only 6 digits in their Messenger ids, I would have thought I'd know a lot about search engine optimization (seo) even though I haven't been on the SEM bandwagon doing anything of the sort professionally in the past couple of years.

However, I am pleased to see that I agree with all of Jill's points and I do not believe I am making any huge faux pas (other than mis-spelling French-american words ;-)

I would like to highlight Ms. Whalen's Top 10 Signs:

1. SEO and SEM is a combination of many good practices


2. Use unique title tags on each page of a site


3. Use meta tags to aid searching, but do not fret.


4. Do update content and pages on a site on a regular basis, but be patient on search engine appearance.


5. Consider your site architecture carefully as well as file naming schemas. What do your news and article archives look like? Might a bot find and identify them readily?


6. Link about. But don't buy something you don't need. If you aren't sure what you need, or not sure of what your vendor is telling you, consider how much research backed the opinion and get a second, informed opinion if possible.


7. Keep yourself and your team in the know. State of the art culture, trends, technologies, and best practices are easy to monitor. If your team has specialties, consider publishing each researcher's blog on the corporate intranet. Sharig the wealth means getting buy in from business sponsors. Your experts are still the experts.

10 Signs That Your SEO Is a Quack ? HRA - Jill Whalen: "7. Your SEO company never mentions that they may very well need to redo your site architecture so that your important pages are prominently featured within your site navigation. In this case it’s very possible you’re dealing with an inexperienced, quack SEO. This is usually something that is not a quick fix, so most quacks are reluctant to discuss it with you (if they even know it’s important). But if your site architecture is not search-engine-ready, everything else you do will have much less impact."

I would add that it's not nexessary to be gimicky or throw too many blinking, animated, or flash advertisements on a website. Be discreet. Find the happy balance between giving out "eyes" to your sponsors and keeping your customers. Read about.com lately? I for one am mildly annoyed that my eye has to follow a crotchety path around large advertisements! (Speaking of About.com, remember that data mining site I mentioned? there it is!)

Have a great day!
Kate
60 degrees in CT

Usage Statistics for unitypond.net - November 2006

To end our series of web traffic analysis tips for this evening, check out Novembers User Agents. BAck in the day when I was managing content on multiple corporate web sites, I used to use this to chart how many of our users had what versions of which browsers. That's baout what you get for me 10-day stats, shown below:

Usage Statistics for unitypond.net - November 2006: "Top 15 of 171 Total User Agents
# Hits User Agent
1 2318 31.19% Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/
2 656 8.83% Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; http://www.google.co
3 534 7.18% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1; .NET
4 470 6.32% Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.7) G
5 303 4.08% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1
6 299 4.02% MJ12bot/v1.0.7 (http://majestic12.co.uk/bot.php? )
7 277 3.73% msnbot/1.0 ( http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
8 270 3.63% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.5; Windows 98; Win 9x 4.90)
9 234 3.15% Googlebot-Image/1.0
10 218 2.93% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.0; Windows 95) VoilaBot BETA
11 191 2.57% Bloglines/3.1 (http://www.bloglines.com; 1 subscriber)
12 109 1.47% Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.0.8) G
13 97 1.30% Gigabot/2.0 (http://www.gigablast.com/spider.html)
14 86 1.16% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
15 68 0.91% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)"

However, now that I am delving into th world of Assessibility assessments, I am aware that user agents mean much more than just browsers. Do your users have PC, Mac, Mouse, PDA, Cell phones?

Rather than seeing those users are mising and assuming it's not important, please take a hard look and consider whether your site is just inaccessible to folks with special technology!

Have you created a text only version with proper structure, markup and presentation? Have you tried pulling up your own web site on your cell phone or Blackberry?

Give it a try and check back in coming months as URLyGRL.com begins to improve access!

--G'night,
Kate

CareerJournal | When You Work to Live And Your Boss Lives to Work

Managing Work-Related Stress

CareerJournal | When You Work to Live And Your Boss Lives to Work: "'Stress is most often created by events that are uncontrollable and unpredictable,' says Dr. Worchel. 'The stress is coming from the fact that she doesn't know when these special meetings will happen or when she'll have to stay later for work. There's a lot of unpredictability there. She doesn't know how to control it.'

To your boss, say something like, 'I'm uncomfortable with the way things are. I'm missing meetings and I have a great deal of conflict whether to leave at the appointed time or stay for an hour. Can we talk about it?'

During this conversation, your feelings about him not having a life outside work are not relevant. Nor is the time you need to pick up your daughter. You should not pit your personal problems against someone else's unless you are a guest on 'Divorce Court.' The troubles created by flexible time are the real issue. Why you have that schedule is immaterial."

How People with Disabilities Use the Web

Has your web designer considered these users with money in their pockets, just waiting to purchase from you?

How People with Disabilities Use the Web: "Following is a list of scenarios and accessibility solutions:

* online shopper with color blindness (user control of style sheets)
* reporter with repetitive stress injury (keyboard equivalents for mouse-driven commands; access-key)
* online student who is deaf (captioned audio portions of multimedia files)
* accountant with blindness (appropriate markup of tables, alternative text, abbreviations, and acronyms; synchronization of visual, speech, and braille display)
* classroom student with dyslexia (use of supplemental graphics; freezing animated graphics; multiple search options)
* retiree with aging-related conditions, managing personal finances (magnification; stopping scrolling text; avoiding pop-up windows)
* supermarket assistant with cognitive disability (clear and simple language; consistent design; consistent navigation options; multiple search options)
* teenager with deaf-blindness, seeking entertainment (user control of style sheets; accessible multimedia; device-independent access; labelled frames; appropriate table markup)"

HTML tools by Hermish

HTML tools by Hermish: "Your HTML and accessibility evaluation tools are designed to help bring your web site up to required standards outlined by The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Web guidelines in compliance to the Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI), a set of guidelines with different priority levels. The European Union suggests that websites have at least Priority level 1. The United States have their own set of guidelines named Section 508. Hermish can check your document for Section 508 with the Accessibility evaluation tool as well. "

Open Invitation to Assistive Technology Vendors - The Web Standards Project

From Webstandards.org:

Open Invitation to Assistive Technology Vendors - The Web Standards Project: "At this time, we are writing to formally offer you our expertise in the area of web standards in relation to accessibility, as well as the potential offered by our existing contact with the above mentioned software vendors, in the hope of being able to assist you in leveraging web standards for your company’s assistive technology product."

Education Task Force - The Web Standards Project

Education Task Force - The Web Standards Project: "Education Task Force
Mission Statement

The WaSP Education Task Force was created in 2005 to work directly with institutions of higher education to help raise awareness of Web standards and accessibility among instructors, administrators, and Web development teams.
Objectives

1. Encourage instruction of Web standards and accessibility best practices in all Web design, interactive media, informational and computer science programs in order to prepare students for Web-related careers.
2. Promote the creation of standards-compliant, accessible public Web sites and instructional tools. Understanding that legacy sites and tools exist, our goal is to help institutions aim for policies which, at a minimum, require that all new sites and instructional tools use valid, semantic markup and follow WAI Accessibility Guidelines.
3. Liaise with institutions of higher education and related communities to promote and address the implementation of Web standards and accessibility best practices through discussion, Web standards users groups, and presentations as well as attendance and participation in industry events."