Blog Posting #4. Progress Reports

Chapter 27 describes the common questions asked by the readers of progress reports and how reader centered writing process can result in effective progress reports adhering to the superstructure for reports that includes ways to correspond with readers' major questions. I have not written a progress report by myself, but my team has composed a progress report letting our client know the progress of our project. By taking the readers’ concern with the future into account, we wrote a progress report that shows the preliminary results of our projects. The superstructure for the progress report covered these topics: Introduction, problem, objectives, solution, schedule/management, and recommendation. In the first part of the report, we introduced ourselves as part of the team doing the particular project. The second part answers the question of the purpose of work and the work in progress. It explained how the project is ahead of schedule, and the results that we have produced. Next part inquired whether there needs to be any additional functionalities recommended by the client. We explained how things stand overall and welcomed recommendations to improve the project. At the end, we arranged a meeting with the reader and offered flexibility. We generally followed a persuasive and optimistic tone in the progress report. 

Blog Posting #3. Designing Documents (Chapter 17 posting)

Chapter 17 discusses possible ways to revise and improve documents and how to improve them in the most limited time. I have followed several of the guidelines to identify the feasible ways to improve a draft. I always read the draft at least twice to spot any changes that needs to be done. A guideline that I can follow when revising the Detailed Design is to shift focus each time when proof reading the drafts. This can be separated into grammatical revision and quality check. One of the guidelines that I need to work on is reading the draft from the reader’s perspective. It is important to do this is identify how my communication might impact the organization and their policies. I can accomplish this by reading the draft out loud so that I can listen how it might sound to the reader and try to improve the draft. It is also critical to consider if the reader might find each section of the document persuasive and useful. Another guideline that I follow for all my documents is using computer aids to check for possible errors. I use spell checkers and grammar checkers to identify possible misspellings and grammatical errors for my documents. In order to improve the detailed design, I can also check for any mistakes missed by computer suggestions.