Milestone One : Area of Focus and Framework

For Milestone One, you will submit a written report in which you analyze the communication environment that exists within BOLDFlash and discuss the particular areas of concern.

Specifically the following critical elements must be addressed: Background and Area of Focus: Analyze the communication environment that exists within BOLDFlash, and discuss the particular areas of concern.

Define the area that you feel should be your focus to start. Specifically, describe which area (internal business processes, product documentation, or technical service communication) you feel is the most important to fix first, and describe why. Provide your reasoning.

Key Stakeholders: Discuss your framework for planning and communicating with the stakeholders in your chosen area. Determine who the stakeholders are, why they are stakeholders in your chosen area, and how your communications will affect them.

Established Practices: Identify established communication practices that would benefit your approach to communicating with the stakeholders that you have identified. Provide evidence to support your conclusions.

Framework for Communication: Construct a framework for continued communication, both technical and nontechnical, with the identified stakeholders.

This framework will be the one to which the Mobile Division management team will refer when tasked with special projects.

Milestone Three  : Training

Refer to the case study (BOLDFlash: Cross-Functional Challenges in the Mobile Division) and the artifact documents (located in the Assignment Guidelines and Rubrics folder in Blackboard) for this and all other milestones related to the final project.

Submit a two-part document. In the first part, you will submit a written report in which you will:

Select the methods for communication and collaboration that best fit your area of focus and implement them as training for the Mobile Division management team. 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.

Determine 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?

Determine 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?

Determine how successful the technical communication will be in delivering the intended message. Will the necessary information reach the target audience? Why or why not? How can you tell?

Identify the key steps of your framework. Keep in mind the various audiences that need the information. Remember that your guidelines need to be detailed, easy to follow, and accurate to ensure that the resulting communications are successful.

In the second part, you will submit either a written report or a training video (or both) in which you:

Exemplify the training by taking an existing communication practice in your area of focus and adapting the technical communication practice to more successfully meet the needs of the target audience you identified. Be sure to apply the guidelines that you established.

Explain what you did to adapt the communication practice and the reasoning for your changes. This will serve as the explanation to the team so that they understand the greater context of the adaptation. Be sure to explain how the guidelines you have established were applied.

Specifically the following critical elements must be addressed:

Target audience

Message

Critique

Adaptation

Explanation