News & Events
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JoAnn Hackos to speak at AUGI 2002
the 7th Annual Arbortext Users' Group International (AUGI) conference on
May 15-17, 2002, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada
For more information about the conference, visit
Arbortext's Web site
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JoAnn Hackos and the CIDM invite you to Content Management:
Strategies for Single Sourcing
on June 3-4, 2002 in San Francisco, CA
Visit
www.cm-strategies.com for details!
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Trisoft and Comtech Services present
E-fficiency in Technical Communication: Single Sourcing in a Multilingual Environment,
a one-day conference on May 27, 2002, in Antwerp, Belgium,
with a one-day workshop, How to Plan and Implement a Single-Source Project,
taught by JoAnn Hackos, PhD, on May 28, 2002.
For more information and to register for the conference and
workshop, visit
Trisoft's Web site
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JoAnn Hackos and the CIDM invite you to
Best Practices 2002
on September 29-October 2, 2002 in Galveston, TX
For more information, visit
the CIDM Web site
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Upcoming Workshops
The CIDM sponsors the following workshops between April and September 2002.
Sign up now:
User and Task
Analysis for Information Design
JoAnn Hackos, PhD,
May 14-15, 2002, Portsmouth, NH,
Bill Hackos, PhD,
September 18-19, 2002, Arlington, VA,
October 8-9, 2002, Boston, MA
Structured Writing
for Single Sourcing
JoAnn Hackos, PhD,
May 20-21, 2002, Charlotte, NC
Structuring
Information for Online Success
Henry Korman, RA,
June 11-12, 2002, Jacksonville, FL,
August 5-6, 2002, St. Paul, MN
Developing a Strategy
for Minimalism: Creating Manuals People Will Use
JoAnn Hackos, PhD,
June 18-19, 2002, Portland, OR,
September 5-6, 2002, Greenville, SC
Developing a Single-Source
Strategy for XML Authoring, Content Management, and Dynamic Web Delivery
JoAnn Hackos, PhD, and Tina Hedlund,
June 24-26, 2002, at Arbortext in Ann Arbor, MI
For more information on these and other workshops,
visit the Seminars in Usable Design Web site at
http://www.comtech-serv.com/workshops/index.shtml
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Are Offshore Technical Communicators More Willing to
Follow Best Practices Than Their US Counterparts?
JoAnn T. Hackos, PhD
CIDM Director
http://www.infomanagementcenter.com
In the April 2, 2002 Issue 64 of
E-SSENTIALS!, the e-newsletter of the
Software Productivity Center, Carol Dekkers assessed the reasons why so many
"offshore" software development organizations appear easily to achieve
process maturity levels of 4 and 5 on the CMM (Capabilities
Maturity Model) scale. US software developers typically have
difficulty advancing much beyond Level 1, the lowest maturity
level, characterized by considerable autonomy. Dekkers argues
that organizations founded in more prescriptive,
procedure-oriented cultures are more likely to follow the
directives issued by an official body or their own management
than are organizations in more independent, choice-oriented
cultures. She quotes Dr. David Zubrow of the Software
Engineering Institute (SEI) as observing that countries that
were once part of the British empire, such as India,
Singapore, and Hong Kong, tend to accept prescribed processes.
Dekkers gingerly places Britain, Canada, and Australia in the
prescriptive category also.
In analyzing the difficulty of implementing standard processes
in American organizations, Dekkers also remarks that it is much easier to impose
a structure on a new organization than to re-engineer processes in an existing
organization, often at the same time that current work is being implemented.
Many of the offshore organizations have been started in the last two or three
years, although new software development groups in the US are not particularly
open to strict procedural accountability.
If you're wondering what all this has to do with
information-development organizations, let me explain two
ideas that are gradually merging for me: organizational
process maturity and offshore information-development staff.
Read
the full article
Offshore Workforce Survey and Benchmark
In the next few weeks, the CIDM will be conducting a survey
of the successes and challenges in using an offshore
workforce. The survey will begin a new benchmark study of
experiences with offshore writers and the move toward more
mature processes within our information-development
organizations worldwide.
Funding needed—if you are interested in supporting the
workforce benchmark, please email Cynthia Tamesue at
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To conduct the benchmark internationally, we need participation and
sponsorship. We are now working on the sponsorship fees but
hope to keep these comparatively low to involve more
participants. Let us know what you might be able to
contribute in return for the comprehensive benchmark report
and participation in the study.
How Technical Should a Technical Communicator Be?
JoAnn Hackos answers the question "How technical should a
technical communicator be?"
Technical communicators must be capable of becoming product
subject-matter experts, at least to the extent that they can
adequately represent the interests of the users of the
product. If the users are technical experts, the
communicators must learn about the users' experience in the
field, their agendas in using the product and its support
information, and their goals in the specific implementation
of the product. If the communicators cannot conduct a
meaningful conversation with the users about the subject
matter, then they cannot represent their needs sufficiently
for the information they impart to be useful.
Read
the full article
IT Service and IT Organisation Management Methods
and Models—Part 2
Robert N. Phillips
CEO, Lasotell Pty Ltd.
http://www.lasotell.com.au
If you are involved in trying to understand the various
facets of IT service delivery or of an IT organisation in
general, there are two very useful models/methodologies you
can investigate. They take all the mystique out of such
tasks—including documenting them:
- Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
- Control Objectives for Information and related Technology
(CobiT)—yes, that is the correct capitalisation.
This, the second article, deals with CobiT. You can read the
first article at
www.infomanagementcenter.com/enewsletter/200203/downunder.htm
CobiT is the most useful tool of its kind for IT that I have
seen in the last 15 years. You may not have an immediate need for it, but it is
worth keeping in your drawer.
Read
the full article
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The Center For Information-Development Management
The Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM) is an
organization of information-development, training, and support managers across
the United States and internationally. The CIDM is directed by Dr. JoAnn
Hackos, international leader in the management of the design, development, and
dissemination of information to customers and employees. Under her leadership,
the CIDM conducts benchmark studies among member organizations and elsewhere,
sponsors research into information development and its management, gathers and
disseminates results and resources through newsletters, the Web, seminars, an
annual conference, and research white papers. The CIDM facilitates the sharing
of information among the most skilled managers in the information industry.
If you are interested in reading more in-depth articles, you
should consider subscribing to the Best Practices newsletter at
http://www.infomanagementcenter.com/masterindex.shtml.
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©2002 by the Center for Information-Development Management. All rights reserved.
Tel. (303) 232-7586
Fax. (303) 232-0659
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