A course in document management

Abstract

Though good management is crucial to the creation of quality technical documents, the subject is often ignored in academic technical writing courses, and the rare in-house courses are narrowly company-specific. This paper discusses a course developed for document managers, designed to balance the specificity of a companybased how-to course and the abstractness of a management theory course. The course was based on accounts of management practices in many organizations. It presented a variety of methods and concepts, and encouraged flexibility in thinking about document management. Topics included personnel management, long-term planning, project planning, and project direction and control.