Author Archives: Tim James "Mr. Procedure"

Now we get to the central theme of this series. If I have a procedure whose relevance has been established through task identification, and I have written it in such a way as to enable learning, then it is time … Continue reading →

To structure procedures to facilitate learning, the procedure should establish learning “hooks” early on, and use these hooks to hang additional learning. In general, a procedure flow would look like this: 1. An introduction that describes the content of the … Continue reading →

Procedures must connect directly to the work performed to be effective in achieving their desired intent. That is the “relevance” test. The second critical element of the procedure is that they must be learning-focused. Since the procedure is only as … Continue reading →

A situation in one of my previous career stops illustrates the importance of having a defined list of “work that is performed.” The company I worked for had a three-roll mill, also called a paint mill. The mill was used … Continue reading →

The goal is to make procedures relevant to the procedure consumer. A procedure is only relevant if the information of the procedure is directly connected to the work that is being performed. The sentence above is seemingly obvious, but rarely … Continue reading →

To make a procedure achieve its intended training outcome, the procedure must first be relevant. That sounds simple enough, but in many environments, the development of procedures came about for any number of reasons that had nothing to do with … Continue reading →

In my most recent series, I discussed “What makes an effective procedures writer,” based on a poll at LinkedIn. One of the points I made in the series, and emphatically in the procedure-writing course (which you can still request from … Continue reading →

If you are a member of the Technical Writer in Action community on LinkedIn, you now understand why I could not tackle the topic of “effective procedure writing” in the comment section. This is the final installment, and I thank … Continue reading →

The basic characteristics of an “effective” procedure writer have been discussed in the previous eight posts. In the final two posts, I am stepping out a little further (on the limb, as it may be). In the wrap-up to this discussion, … Continue reading →

We are discussing the characteristics of effective procedure writers, specifically those that go beyond the basics of the poll question on the Tech Writer group forum. The second element of the effective procedure writer is the ability to differentiate between … Continue reading →