Week 6 - FrameMaker book: Prospectus, Design Doc, and Project Plan

My work and my homework are beginning to blend! I am a technical writer now and plan to continue as a technical writer after I graduate (11 more weeks, 11 more weeks), so, to me, is an exciting thing!

I stayed after work for a couple hours yesterday and converted my project Prospectus, Design Document, and Project Plan from Word into a FrameMaker book. I already spend many hours a week working on document conversion at work, so why not turn my project documents into a Frame book?

I created a book chapter for each document, and, thinking ahead, I can add other project deliverables to the book as additional chapters. I used a basic cover page (with a temporary title) and applied some paragraph and character styles to the content. Some of the content references information in other chapters, i.e., See Project Plan, and I'll create additional cross-references as I add more information.

At this point, I've decided not to change the content in these first three chapters or to retrofit the content to the project as I make changes to the website design (app-to-doc). There may be some value to preserving the original intent and comparing it to the actual project as I go.

I'm approaching this project as a small "product release" and applying basic SDLC processes, which includes iteration. Change from original intent to final outcome are inevitable; because I am creating an interactive website, I feel this is appropriate.

Nevertheless, I may rearrange the content in these document, or reformat numbered lists to bullets, or vice versa. As a technical writer, I want it to look nice!

I need to do a little work to the Frame book. I notice a couple blank pages at the end of each chapter, which I want removed. I want to create and apply a template to the cover page to center the text, which is something I need to know how to do anyway as a regular Frame user. I will also (eventually) create a table of contents.

I saved the book as a .pdf so it can be easily viewed, and I will update it here, periodically, as I make changes.

So much to do. But we now have a time and date scheduled for the Oral Defense, so... wow!