Technical Research

Overview

Throughout this course, you will be working on developing several components of the procedures manual and supporting documents, such as a brochure, a proposal to a potential project sponsor to develop the procedures manual, and PowerPoint training. Additional information and the deliverables for each Individual Project will be provided in the assignment description for this project.

In this first Individual Project, you are asked to develop the outline of the sections that will be included in the procedures manual as well as a draft of a proposal to submit to both your instructor and a potential project sponsor. The other information you will include is a high-level description of the business process or set of procedures and the intended audience for the manual.

You will also be setting up the foundation of the procedures manual documentation outline that you will add to each week.

Project Selection

The first step will be to select a process or set of procedures for which a manual does not exist today. You will then outline the sections of the manual. This project will be used as the basis for each of the assignments throughout the course and should conform to the following guidelines:

• Nontrivial: The selected business process or set of procedures should reflect a real-life application.
• Domain knowledge: Students will be applying knowledge of this process or set of procedures to determine the contents of the manual.

Select a process or set of procedures that fit these requirements, and submit your proposal to your instructor before proceeding further with the assignments in the course. Keep in mind that this is a draft of a proposal that you could later send to a project sponsor. Approval should be sought within the first few days of the course. Your instructor will tell you how to submit this proposal and what notification will be given for project approval.

Assignment

Your first task in this process will be to select a process or set of procedures to use as the basis of your procedures manual. As you proceed through each project phase, you will add content to each section of the final document to gradually complete the final project deliverable.

The project deliverables are as follows:

• Procedures manual document shell (in MS Word format)
  • Title page
    • Course number and name
    • Project name
    • Student name
    • Date
  • Table of contents (autogenerated)
    • Separate page
    • Maximum of 3 levels deep
    • Fields updated so that the TOC it is up-to-date before submitting your project
  • Section headings (create each heading on a new page with TBD as content, except for sections listed under “New Content” below)
    1. Project Outline
    2. Abstract
    3. Procedures Manual Outline
    4. Procedures Manual Proposal
    5. Procedures Manual Brochure
    6. Procedures Manual Preparation Plan
    7. Procedures Manual
    8. Procedures Manual: Quick Reference
    9. Procedures Manual Training (PowerPoint Deck)
• New content to be inserted in above shell
  • Project Outline
    • Write a brief description of the process or set of procedures.
    • Material can be taken from the approved proposal submitted to your instructor, and this will serve as the draft for the proposal you will be submitting to a potential project sponsor in the next IP assignment.
    • Be sure that this project is approved by the instructor.
  • Procedures manual outline
    • Outline each of the sections that will be included in the final procedures manual.
    • In 1–2 sentences, describe what types of content will go in each section.
    3 pages. APA format. 5 sources cited throughout the paper. Reference page, abstract. No plagerism.