2   Development Process

Managing the Process

Monitoring and reporting on progress and keeping things on track is the job of the project manager. In most respects, managing a large writing project, print or online, is no different from other forms of project management. Like all project managers, your concerns will be to manage the scope, quality, time, and cost of the project. Scope (what’s included and what isn’t) and quality are managed as part of the editing, review, and approval process. The project manager will continuously refer back to the document plan, where concrete standards have been established for both.

Time and cost are managed by keeping a careful eye on how much time is being spent and how much progress is being made. To do this, you’ll need to gather timesheet information from project participants and compare it to activities completed. This information can be issued as a progress report and distributed to members of the team.

The progress report can be created during document planning, and then used throughout the project to track and report on the progress of each section of the manual. The report should be updated and recirculated at least every two weeks. See the sample progress report (Figure 2-2).

You can create the report using a word processor or a spreadsheet. If you are already using project management software within your organization, you can use it to track and report on your project. Because of the time that goes into setting up and maintaining up-to-date project data, however, it’s probably not worthwhile buying and learning to use this type of software solely for your manual project.