SNHU IT520 Final Project - As businesses incorporate more

IT 520 Final Project  

Overview

The final project for this course is the creation of a communication framework and training plan.

As businesses incorporate more and more technology into daily operations, information technology (IT) professionals are tasked with not only solving technology problems and providing excellent technical services, but communicating effectively to a wide variety of audiences. The purpose of communication is to perpetuate brilliant ideas, bring change, and solve problems in any discipline, but within the realm of IT, it takes on a particular twist. Your final project for this course concerns critiquing and adapting existing technical communications to ensure necessary information is successfully delivered to target audiences, while developing a framework from which IT professionals can approach technical communications to a variety of audiences.

Throughout the final project, you will be utilizing the case study (BOLDFlash: Cross-Functional Challenges in the Mobile Division) and the artifact documents (located in the Assignments folder) for all milestones related to the final project.

The project is divided into three milestones, which will be submitted at various points throughout the course to scaffold learning and ensure quality final submissions. These milestones will be submitted in Modules Two, Four, and Seven. The final submission will occur in Module Nine.

This assessment will assess your mastery with respect to the following course outcomes:

? IT-520-01: Integrate effective collaboration and communication strategies into technical enterprise solutions and communications plans

IT-520-02: Establish conceptual frameworks for planning and specific guidelines for communicating technical information to multiple stakeholders

IT-520-03: Evaluate existing technical communications for the extent to which they effectively communicate necessary information to end users

? IT-520-04: Adapt technical communications to successfully meet the needs of various target audiences

Scenario

When promoted to the new vice president of BOLDFlash’s Mobile Division, specializing in high-tech storage components for electronic devices, Roger Cahill understood very clearly that his top priority was to get the struggling division back on track. As he started in on the job, he soon realized that problems with technical communications were a major cause of the division’s other problems. Rapid sales growth, reorganization of the division itself, the vast number of products, and the fast pace of new product development had all increased the challenges of effective communication between division teams and with suppliers, partners, and customers

As the just-hired director of technical communications for the Mobile Division, you must analyze the current state of technical communications within the company. In your first days on the job, you have learned that there are no formatting requirements or templates for internal product documentation or customer materials, that individual techs often develop such materials without any structure or guidance, and that the Technical Support team has received several hundred complaints about the complexity and, at times, inaccuracy of the instructions that accompany products.

What is more, various departments within the division have cited difficulties in understanding the products and services BOLDFlash’s Mobile Division has to offer because of the extreme technical nature of the various products. As one example, a project was conducted earlier in the year to prepare a response to an RFP (Request for Proposal) from the U.S. Navy for secure disk drives. Such contract responses require clear communication of technical aspects in a business context, yet upper management has had difficulty navigating the design specification documents and technical blueprints that the R&D group has prepared.

Cahill has tasked you with developing training on technical communication for the division’s management team and with creating a cohesive plan for developing technical documents and communications that will benefit the company in the long run.

Prompt

Based on the case study (BOLDFlash: Cross-Functional Challenges in the Mobile Division), the three artifact documents (internal business processes, product documentation, or technical service communication), and the above scenario, you must construct a plan of action for tackling the various areas of technical communications needs. You will also need to pick an area of focus (the internal business processes, product documentation, or technical service communication) to begin adapting the technical communications that already exist and are not meeting audience needs. To this end, you will produce a critique of an existing technical communication, including your methods for adapting the communication and your reasoning for the change. This will act as the basis for the technical communication training that you will develop for BOLDFlash’s Mobile Division management team. The most important piece, perhaps, is the inclusion of a framework and guidelines for creating effective technical communication.

Specifically the following critical elements must be addressed:

I. Background and Area of Focus: Analyze the communication environment that exists within BOLDFlash. What are the particular areas of concern, and which area do you feel should be your focus to start? Specifically, which area (internal business processes, product documentation, or technical service communication) do you feel is the most important to fix first? Why? Provide your reasoning. [IT-520-01]

II. Framework for Planning and Communicating With Stakeholders: a) Key Stakeholders: Discuss your area of focus. Who are the key stakeholders involved in this particular area, why are they involved, and to what extent will your framework for communication impact them? [IT-520-02]

b) Established Practices: What established communication practices would benefit your approach to communicating among the stakeholders that you have identified? Provide evidence to support your conclusions. [IT-520-02]

c) Construct a framework for continued communication, both technical and nontechnical, among the identified stakeholders. This framework will be the one to which the management team will refer for interdepartmental and external communication with customers. [IT-520-02]

III. Training Plan: How will you approach training the management team and communicating the new guidelines to existing employees?

a) What communication strategies will you incorporate and why? How are these communication strategies appropriate for those individuals to whom your training is directed? Provide evidence to support your conclusions. [IT-520-01]

b) What collaboration strategies will you incorporate? Determine the collaborative structure and strategies that will help the managers and directors throughout and after their training experiences. Why are these appropriate? Who will be collaborating? Provide evidence to support your conclusions. [IT-520-01] c) Training Method(s) (how you will share your training with trainees and other stakeholders): Your method must be appropriate for the audience to which you want to communicate. Justify your choice(s) of method with research. [IT-520-01] IV. Specified Guidelines From Your Focus Area: Outline the specific guidelines for creating successful technical communications. Identify the key steps—for example, who are the various audiences that need the information? Remember that your guidelines need to be detailed for your colleagues to follow, clear for your colleagues to understand, and accurate to ensure that the resulting communications are successful. [IT-520-02]

V. The Training: Select the methods for communication and collaboration that best fit your area of focus, and implement them in a training. Your training can be a written deliverable or a video/audio recording. You will select a specific technical communication artifact from the ones provided that is related to your area of focus to use in the training, and you will apply your guidelines to the audience identification, critique, adaptation, and explanation.

a) Who is the target audience of the communication? From the case study and artifacts provided, what characteristics can you identify about your target audience, such as their perspectives, backgrounds, and organizational agenda? [IT-520-03]

b) What is the intended message that needs to be delivered? What pertinence does that message hold for the intended audience? In other words, why does the message matter for the target audience? [IT-520-03]

c) To what extent was the technical communication successful in delivering the intended message? Did the necessary information get through to the target audience? Why or why not? [IT-520-03]

VI. Adaptation Example

a) Adapt the technical communication artifact to more successfully meet the needs of the target audience that was identified. Be sure to apply the guidelines that you established. [IT-520-04]

b) Explain what you did to adapt the communication and the reasoning for your changes. This will serve as the explanation to the management team so that they understand the greater context of the adaptation. Be sure to explain how the guidelines you have established were applied. [IT-520-04]

c) Now consider an alternative audience that might receive the technical communication, and analyze their dispositions and needs for communication. Adapt the communication to this new audience and explain your steps to your team. How successful will this adaptation be in delivering the intended message to your new audience? [IT-520-04]

 

BOLDFlash – Internal Business Process Artifacts

After several months on the job, Roger Cahill called a meeting with all department heads and stated: Having had the chance to observe operations now for several months, it is obvious to me that we do not have sound business processes in place in a great many areas. We are creating problems for ourselves that are impacting product quality, delivery timeliness, efficiency, costs, and, my greatest concern, customer satisfaction. Competition within our marketplace is heating up, and we need to quickly get on top of our processes to regain the confidence of our customers and make BOLDFlash their first choice when purchasing. Cahill then presented examples of the internal business processes in use at BOLDFlash. To highlight the broad nature of the problem throughout the Mobile Division, he presented troublesome process examples from every department. (A subset of the examples follows.) To reinforce the importance of establishing solid business processes, Cahill closed by saying: Within the next 45 days, we will focus on establishing clear, efficient, defined business processes and gain agreement on these processes among all departments. This is now your top priority. As you read the following process-related memos, consider how other department heads and their staff members might interpret the processes being introduced or revised and what their reaction might be. Also consider whether the communications are clear, unambiguous, and workable. Are there gaps or assumptions? Are there any common themes among the memos? Memo #1 - Revised R&D Product Release Process Memo #2 - Product delivery commitment process Memo #3 - Product enhancements BOLD From: Karl Melzer - Director, Product Development To: All department heads Subject: Revised R&D product release process R&D is making changes to the product release process so that we can reduce the time we’re spending on putting this together. The new manufacturing package will no longer include special notes, because we already send these to Kevin’s admin assistant. We’re also dropping the product documentation because that’s sitting on a server so already out there. The manufacturing package will now be made available 5 business days prior to production start. I know this puts a squeeze on Mfg., but we always need more time to work on it. Finally, I’m directing my staff to no longer respond to questions coming on from Tech Support prior to actual product release date. We are continually crunched for time and need to move on to the next product release as quickly as possible. Karl BOLDFlash Corporation 18 Commerce Boulevard Manchester, New Hampshire For Internal Use Only BOLD From: Chip Bryant - Director, Sales To: All department heads Subject: Product delivery commitment process We have been running into problems with customer orders where requested delivery dates are not being met—a very hot topic at a recent Sales staff meeting. So to eliminate the problem going forward, we are implementing the following process beginning immediately. Sales reps will check in with Manufacturing on product availability against our requested ship date. If we don’t hear anything back within 2 business days, we will assume that the order can be filled and shipped per our requested date, and we’ll confirm back to the customer. Chip BOLDFlash Corporation 18 Commerce Boulevard Manchester, New Hampshire For Internal Use Only BOLD From: Kavita Patel - Director, Marketing To: All department heads Subject: Product enhancements Representatives from Marketing have been attending a number of industry trade shows this season. We are receiving a lot of feedback that customers are looking for more enhancements to existing products. We are also seeing our competitors paying more attention to enhancements. I have directed my staff to focus on identifying enhancements that we can make, particularly to our new flash drive line. We’re going to look at enhancements that can generate some “flash” in the marketplace for our product! Time is of the essence with these new enhancements. We are confident we can keep these changes simple and not rock the boat too much. So that we can speed this along, the team will feed those requirements directly to Manufacturing. This new approach will give us a great story for our upcoming trade show in Las Vegas, so I know everyone will be behind us in this! Kavita