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.
Specifically the following critical elements must be addressed:
Training Plan: Communication Determine the communication strategies you will incorporate in all areas of focus, and describe why. Discuss how these communication strategies are appropriate for those individuals to whom your training is directed. Provide evidence to support your conclusions.
Training Plan: Collaboration Discuss the collaboration strategies you incorporate in communicating with all areas of focus. Determine the collaborative structure and strategies that will help the various managers and directors throughout and after their training experiences. Why are these appropriate? Who will be collaborating? Provide evidence to support your conclusions.
Training Plan: Method(s) Determine the training method(s) you will use (how you will share your training with trainees and other stakeholders) in your chosen area of focus. Your method must be appropriate for the audience to which you want to communicate. Justify your choice(s) of methods with research
Specific Guidelines Identify the key steps of your framework for creating successful communications in your chosen area of focus. Keep in mind the various audiences that need the information. Remember that your guidelines need to be detailed for the management team to follow, clear for your colleagues to understand, and accurate to ensure that the resulting communications are successful. Discuss how you will approach training the Mobile Division management team and communicating the new guidelines for communication to them.
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 creating a cohesive plan for developing technical documents and communications that will benefit the company in the long run.