Technical Writing Exercise – Project Management

The best way to begin the task of describing a process is to break the total process into smaller, more manageable steps or phases. In this week’s exercise, that’s what you’ll do. But instead of describing a processYou will apply the basic idea of ​​the article to the process of managing a project.

Here’s the situation: You’re asked to be part of a team writing a manual for the hockey team’s new locker room manager. This manual will describe the locker room management process during a home game.

You are given three resources:

• a three-person team of seasoned tech writers; Max, Erma and you
• a folder full of typed, collated, and handwritten sheets of documents with various process items written on them, in no particular order
• two SMEs; the current coach of the team and one of the players

Before you can write the manual, you must decide how you will manage the project. How it will be organized:

• the writing team
• printout data
• the pymes

Homework:

Briefly, in the order in which the functions will be performed, describe how:

1. Break the process down into manageable chunks

2. Organize writers’ responsibilities

3. Organize the documentation

4. Layout the content of the manual

5. Use SMEs in the most efficient way

Not everyone will approach the task in exactly the same way, but your approach to managing the project should be pretty similar to our answer.

When you are done, check the solution below.

Exercise Answer

You have been asked to be part of a team that writes a manual for the hockey team’s new locker room manager. This manual will describe the locker room management process during a home game.

Not everyone will approach the task in exactly the same way, but here is one possible way to manage the project efficiently.

Step 1

The first thing to do is break the entire wardrobe management process into smaller, more manageable phases. The three phases suggested in the article will also work for this task.

A logical breakdown of the process:

• Phase One: Actions Taken Before a Game
• Phase Two: Actions Taken During a Game
• Phase three: actions taken after a game

Step 2

Next, organize the responsibilities of the writers. There are many ways to do this, depending on the size of the project and the theme. For this project, it makes sense to follow the breakdown into Step 1.

Since there are three of you writing the manual, you split up the work, giving each writer a piece of the process. You take Phase One: Actions taken before a game. Max takes Phase Two: Actions performed during the game.. Erma takes Phase Three: Actions taken after the game.

Step 3

To make the best use of the documentation, it is necessary to divide it according to the phase to which it relates. His team, with the help of SMEs, classifies the papers into three parts; one for each phase.

Step 4

With the documentation arranged according to phases, the team develops a content outline for the manual. Each writer will follow the outline so that the three pieces of the manual fit together when finished.

step 5

Since everyone will need to interview both the current manager and the team member, they need to develop a plan to use the writers’ time and SME’s time efficiently.

A possible sequence of interviews, to use everyone’s time efficiently, would look like this:

1. Manager interviews

Max interviews the player

Erma studies the relevant documents for her part of the manual and develops an outline for her phase of the process

2. Max interviews the manager

Erma interviews the player

You study documents relevant to your part of the manual and develop an outline for your phase of the process.

3. Erma interviews the manager

Player interviews.

Max studies the documents relevant to his part of the manual and develops an outline for his phase of the process.

At this point, everyone can take the relevant documentation and apply it to their content outline based on input from SMEs. You may need to talk to SMEs again and meet regularly with your team to keep the project on track. But, with this clearly laid out 5-step project management process, you should have no problem getting the job done.