MEMORANDUM


 DATE: Feb 22, 2007

TO: Lyn Smirnov, Instructor, Technical Writing Department, De Anza College
FROM: Leon Basin
SUBJECT: Status report on Adobe Software for Technical Writers Course

PROJECT OVERVIEW
Our team is developing the De Anza Technical Writing course on Adobe tools. The
course is divided into four sections, one software program per section. Each team
member is responsible for creating the instructor and student materials for one of the
sections:

1. Adobe FrameMaker—Leon Basin

Team members will jointly create the introductory and appended materials that are not
part of their particular software section.

The final product of our project will be a binder to be used by the course instructor. The
binder will be broken down by software program and still further by lecture modules
within each program. The modules will include instructor lecture notes, student lecture
worksheets, student exercises and solutions.

Each software program will have a portfolio assignment that requires students utilize
their new skills. For each portfolio assignment, the students will be provided with an
project prompt with several requirements for the assignment.

WORK COMPLETED
The following tasks have been completed by our team.

• Our team met with one of the project owners, Teague S., to review and gain approval
for the materials created so far. He gave the team guidance on course scope, depth of
materials, exercises and portfolio projects.

• We have finalized all document styles and objectives.

• We have created the content for all portfolio assignments including requirements for
each assignment.

• Significant portions of lecture notes and exercises have been created, with InDesign
approaching completion, and Photoshop and Illustrator sections well underway.

• Tentative FrameMaker section modules have been outlined and research and writing
are underway.

• Our team’s conflicts have been resolved.

 • We were able to gain access to resources from the FrameMaker team.

WORK TO BE COMPLETED
The major tasks our team still needs to complete are listed below.

• Complete writing lecture and exercise content.

• Internal team review of content.

• Format portfolio assignments.

• Write introductory section, table of contents, syllabus, class schedule, and course
submission document.

• Format and edit all content.

• Document review by the project owners.

• Production of the binder and the CD.

PROBLEMS AND ADJUSTMENTS

Our team has made the following adjustments and encountered the following problems.

• We are having some difficulty sticking to a limited scope for each software section.

• We have abandoned the expectation that the FrameMaker section will be based on
the content in the other FrameMaker class.

• We are feeling the pressure of our looming team deadline of February 25 for all
software section content to be completed.

Our deliverables and milestone dates continue to be the same as we reported in our prior
status report.

Deliverable Due Date

Planning worksheet 25 Jan 2007
Publications plan 1 Feb 2007
Status report #1 8 Feb 2007
Style sheet 8 Feb 2007
Status report #2 22 Feb 2007
Document draft 1 Mar 2007
Final document 15 Mar 2007