Live Webinar September 27th, 2012 – 10:00 am – 11:00 am EDT
Duration: 1 hour webinar Credits: 1 PDU Category A – Free PDU
Sponsored by: PMI Requirements Management CoP (REP #S055)
Presented by: Dawn Henwood

Many non-expert readers find the amount of technical detail in a requirements document overwhelming. Faced with a series of long lists and elaborate diagrams, their eyes tend to glaze over. Consequently, they may not examine your document thoroughly enough to be able to provide you with the feedback you need.

The key to creating requirements non-experts can easily read is to think like an web designer and make usability a key factor in your writing. This webinar will introduce you to four simple, easy-to-implement strategies for producing user-friendly requirements:

• Provide an overview highlighting the business goals and benefits
• Use summary statements to introduce sections
• Manage long bulleted lists by using parallelism and subdivisions
• Integrate use case diagrams and other visuals so they are easy to interpret

As with web design, subtle adjustments can make a big difference to the user experience. Working within your organization’s template for requirements, you can easily apply user-friendly writing strategies to improve your communication with colleagues as well as stakeholders.

Presenter: Dr. Dawn Henwood is a published author of A Writing Guide for IT Professionals, columnist, associate professor and program developer/director. She specializes in helping technical experts bridge the gap in knowledge and values that so often separates them from their customers. Her methods have even the most reluctant writers producing clear documents with ease and confidence.

Note: You do have to be a PMI® member to register for this opportunity.

Click to register for Making Your Requirements Documents User-Friendly