water water everywhere

The Electrical Engineering and Computer Science department is engaged in a multi-institution smart-grid computing project. The member sites are looking at the best way to collaborate. In a short five minute teleconference today, I was reminded about the difficulty most engineers have with needs analysis. Rather than spending the time necessary to determine their requirements (the type and degree of required collaboration), there was a sudden jump to the most accessible or user-friendly collaboration tool.

The list and types of cloud-based (and otherwise) collaboration tools grows every day. It's not realistic nor necessary to know every possible platform or tool option. It is, however, necessary to know that the tool you select is going to meet all or most of your requirements. But we first have to identify those requirements. Most of the technical writers I've worked with understand this necessity. Maybe it's because you only need to get burned once by scope-creep and ill-defined project requirements. Maybe it's because most technical writers need well-developed contexts, frameworks, and purpose statements to begin developing effective information products.

The smart-grid computing project sounds extremely interesting. I'm a little geeked up on the opportunities to work with some of these other regional colleges and universities. It fits in nicely with the chancellor's call to action.