7 . 4 . 8 The Internet Appliance
On one side of the Internet boxing ring, we have Microsoft and its allies. On the other, we have Oracle, Sun, and Netscape. The battleground is the future of the Internet. The weapons: the Web, Java and microkernal operating systems versus the Windows desktop model of computing. The battle is over the future of an extremely lowcost device called the Internet Appliance, WebPC, or Network Computer, which will cost under $500 and allow access to the Internet.
The Internet Appliance represents a convergence of several technologies. First is the Web, which has effectively tamed the unruly Internet, somewhat, for the masses. Second is Java as a mechanism to provide network downloadable applications that are portable to many platforms. Third is a network centric operating system a microkernal operating system to execute the applications.
In a cover story "Inside the WebPC" in BYTE magazine of March 1996, Tom Halfill, the author points out the convergence and requirements for such a WebPC. The BYTE article also include high bandwidth access, via cable modems, ISDN, or ATM, as another necessary technology.
Clearly, the history of hardware design points to the high probability of a $500 or less WebPC, not as a likelihood but as an inevitability, and soon. The increasing sophistication
of chips with super computer class compute and I/O processing capabilities is astonishing. Again, according to the BYTE article LSI Communications Products Division is already working on an "Internet on a Chip" to enable the affordable pricing of the Internet Appliance.
Another interesting development in this domain is Apple's apparent shift of the "Pippin," originally a set-top box, towards this concept of the Internet Appliance. In fact, Bandai, a Japanese corporation known for the Power Rangers, is going to manufacture the Pippin under the Power Player name. In December of 1995 Apple and Bandai "demonstrated a Power Player browsing the World Wide Web with Netscape Navigator."
Lowcost Internet access and affordable hardware have tremendous potential. It is also a case where this type of technological advance can help bring computing resources to people who simply can't afford the $3000 PC. If this takes off, the social impact could be enormous.
7 . 4 . 9 The New World Order of Communications
As the technology for document distribution and communications races into the future, the legal system is ill prepared to deal with the many issues these technologies raise. In an effort to address these issues as well as their ethical implications, two organizations have been created: the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and the Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility. EFF issued the following press release as its opening announcement:
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: Cathy Cook (415) 759-5578
NEW FOUNDATION ESTABLISHED TO ENCOURAGE COMPUTER-BASED COMMUNICATIONS POLICIES
Washington, D.C., July 10, 1990 -- Mitchell D. Kapor, founder of Lotus Development Corporation and ON Technology, today announced that he, along with colleague John Perry Barlow, has established a foundation to address social and legal issues arising from the impact on society of the increasingly pervasive use of computers as a means of communication and information distribution. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) will support and engage in public education on current and future developments in computer-based and telecommunications media. In addition, it will support litigation in the public interest to preserve, protect and extend First Amendment rights within the realm of computing and telecommunications technology.
Initial funding for the Foundation comes from private contributions by Kapor and Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, Inc. The Foundation expects to actively raise contributions from a wide constituency.
As an initial step to foster public education on these issues, the Foundation today awarded a grant to the Palo Alto, California-based public advocacy group, Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR). The grant will be used by CPSR to expand the scope of its on-going Computing and Civil Liberties Project.
Because its mission is to not only increase public awareness about civil liberties issues arising in the area of computer-based communications, but also to support litigation in the public interest, the Foundation has recently intervened on behalf of two legal cases.
The first case concerns Steve Jackson, an Austin-based game manufacturer who was the target of the Secret Service's Operation Sun Devil. The EFF has pressed for a full disclosure by the government regarding the seizure of his company's computer equipment. In the second action, the Foundation intends to seek amicus curiae (friend of the court) status in the government's case against Craig Neidorf, a 20-year-old University of Missouri student who is the editor of the electronic newsletter, Phrack World News....
"It is becoming increasingly obvious that the rate of technology advancement in communications is far outpacing the establishment of appropriate cultural, legal and political frameworks to handle the issues that are arising," said Kapor. "And the Steve Jackson and Neidorf cases dramatically point to the timeliness of the Foundation's mission. We intend to be instrumental in helping shape a new framework that embraces these powerful new technologies for the public good."
The use of new digital media in the form of on-line information and interactive conferencing services, computer networks and electronic bulletin boards is becoming widespread in businesses and homes. However, the electronic society created by these new forms of digital communications does not fit neatly into existing, conventional legal and social structures.
The question of how electronic communications should be accorded the same political freedoms as newspapers, books, journals and other modes of discourse is currently the subject of discussion among this country's lawmakers and members of the computer industry. The EFF will take an active role in these discussions through its continued funding of various educational projects and forums.
An important facet of the Foundation's mission is to help both the public and policymakers see and understand the opportunities as well as the challenges posed by developments in computing and telecommunications. In addition, the EFF will encourage
and support the development of new software to enable non-technical users to more easily use their computers to access the growing number of digital communications services available.
In Feb. of 1996 the EFF conducted an online "Blue Ribbon Campaign." The campaign protested a portion of a telecommunications deregulation bill, which passed the US congress and contained a ridiculously unenforceable and illconcieved restriction on free speech on the Internet. Web masters throughout the country were asked to place "blue ribbon" images on their Web pages which linked to information about the bill and it's problems. Political activism has met the Web.
The EFF can be reached at the Internet mail address eff@eff.org. Their Web site is, you guessed it: http://www.eff.org.
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Chapter 8: Document Management
"A memorandum is written not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.'' -Dean Acheson
The creation of large quantities of documents usually involves many people and processes. Eventually, management or the technical staff will recognize the need for good working practices for the document creation, development, and maintenance processes.
Like the management of any complex set of tasks, document management can benefit from sound general management practices. However, some notable practices specifically apply to document management. Two of these are the creation of project standards and the use of configuration management. These two practices apply to a variety of document creation and maintenance tasks. Good management principles apply to any type of electronic document project, whether delivered on paper or on-line. This chapter explores the application of these tools and techniques to document management.
The creation and production of documents in any large project takes a great deal of time, effort, and, ultimately, money. How can the process be controlled? What kinds of issues need to be examined? What parts of the document creation, production, and maintenance process must be managed?(1)
Let's break the document management problem into three areas (1) process: specific functions that must occur in a specific order to complete a document; (2) organization: functional responsibilities of people and management structure; and (3) system: technicalities of the electronic publishing system(s).
In the rest of this chapter, we examine project standards, configuration management, collaborative work, and document imaging. Each of these topics relates in various ways to the process, organization, and system issues outlined above.
Project standards form a bridge between the elements that make up a document and the capabilities of a publishing system. Project standards can also help clarify the publishing process. Configuration management defines the process used to create, maintain, and manage the documents. In addition, configuration management works within the bounds of the functional responsibilities of the people on the project. Collaborative work is the application of new technologies that help to integrate the work process of many people in a controlled manner. Finally, document imaging is a technological systemsoriented solution to problems with the management of existing document archives. Document imaging can help improve the management, use, and accessibility of these archives.
Establishing and using a set of project standards are the simplest things you can do to do improve the efficiency and quality of a project. An organization that produces documents that all follow consistent visual and structural conventions looks professional. Projects of any size, especially those that must be coordinated with a variety of departments and activities, can benefit from the use of project standards.
The term project standards, as used here, covers two areas: (1) those relating to the document themselves, such as layout and structural conventions and (2) those relating to the process of creating and producing the documents. The processoriented aspects of project standards are closely related to configuration management, covered in the next section.
Let's examine the specifics of what a project standard is and how to establish the usage of the standard. Realize that simply defining a project standard will not necessarily cause it to be used. Several components are needed to make an effective set of project standards. These are:
. The project standard definition document.
. An example that uses the standard.
. Templates or style files in one or several electronic publishing formats.
. Guidelines specific to the publishing system.
. Environmental specifications such as fonts, printers, and operating system services.
Let's examine each of these components in turn.
The project standard definition document should be a reference manual in which users can quickly find answers to specific questions on formatting and style. It's desirable, if this manual is rarely used. Most of the time style files and the examples should be the main ways to use the standard.
Examples of the project standards should cover all the optional aspects of the design. For example, if either bullets or a bold font are acceptable for lists of information, present both alternatives. Along with the examples, there should be clear statements about recommended practices. For example, for software documentation, you may recommend that a brief description of each subroutine always precede the subroutine. These are not stylistic issues as much as issues relating to the actual content of your documents. Therefore, a separate "recommended practices" document may be necessary.
Templates or style files allow users to "jump right in," creating documents that conform to the project standard. They are one of the simplest and most effective ways to improve the image of an organization's documents. A corporate look will give your project an aura of professionalism and make that first impression a good one.
Hire a graphic designer or consult your internal art department to design the look of reports, memos, and manuals. Don't assume you can do it alone. When a group of people work together, even loosely, it is possible to give an entire collection of documents visual coherence by using common styles. Common report covers and formats can, at the very least, give the impression that separately produced documents were coordinated and produced in a wellthoughtout fashion, even if they weren't.
The templates are much more than a mere convenience to users, although convenience is an important factor in gaining use of the standard. Templates provide a convenient way of encapsulating the project standard. Just as important, they encourage the use of the
standard. Of course, if you have the luxury of mandating the use of the project standard, encouraging usage is not an issue. However, management chains are often not straightforward, especially in large organizations.
One individual should maintain the template files. Many people may have opinions about the style of the document. However, if versions of the templates start to proliferate, the project standard can disintegrate. Again, these issues relate closely to the configuration management of the documents.
PUBLISHING SYSTEMSPECIFIC GUIDELINES
Every document processing system has its own terminology and capabilities. The standardized usage of these capabilities will not necessarily translate well among various systems. Different systems may simply use different names for similar functionality. For example, WordPerfect styles are almost the same as FrameMaker tags. These systems provide different capabilities in the use of styles and tags, but the concept is fundamentally the same. Tags and styles are named, formatspecific constructs. The consistent and meaningful use of names is important.
Meaningful names will help people who are unfamiliar with the particular document styles use those styles more quickly. For example, naming a particular font style "emphasis" rather than "zowie" will help the uninitiated. Personal, "cutesy" names quickly become tiresome and are usually only meaningful to the select few people familiar with your idiosyncrasies.
Meaningful names are appropriate for virtually anything that requires a name. Thoughtful naming can make files, paragraph styles and tags, user variables, font variations, and other items more intelligible. (2)
In addition to meaningful names, publishing systems often have other capabilities you may wish to use. You can develop a projectspecific dictionary to ease spell checking. You can also create catalogs of styles and tags and make them centrally available. Specifying these items and providing easy access to them will make usage of these standard components convenient and prevent a proliferation of ad hoc solutions created by enterprising staff members. Again, these issues are part of an overall configuration management solution.
Finally, let's examine the environmental component of a project standard. Environmental components are the operating system resources, printers, and publishing system installation options that are specific to your computer.
Probably, you work on one particular computer and use one particular printer, operating system, and publishing system. Most complex publishing systems have a variety of installation options such as languages, dictionaries, fonts supported, and so on. Different siteseven those that use the same electronic publishing systemmay have differences in operating environments. These differences can result in documents that are difficult to transfer from one site to another.
The environmental issues are insidious, because they are hidden from the user. Even experienced users are often not aware that these issues even exist.
The most common environmental differences are those concerning fonts. Don't assume that another location has all the fonts you are using. The project standard should specify the fonts, and you should make sure that all sites have access to the correct set of fonts. Printer description languages may be important if, for example, one site has all HP printers (PCL) and another site uses PostScript printers.
The five components of a project standard outlined above are not absolute requirements. Each project will have unique constraints and circumstances. You should view them as useful guidelines in the creation of your own project standards. Common sense is usually worth a shelf full of guidelines.
Along with the establishment of conventions for particular document processing systems, it is useful to establish procedures on how systems should be used. The process a document goes through is often as important as the content. Sign-offs, approvals, hand-offs, and so on are simply process conventions that clarify who is in control of what and when. Management must usually sign off and add feedback. Clear procedures and identification of what exactly must and must not be approved form the basis of an effective configuration management capability.
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8 . 2 Configuration Management
"Command is getting people to go the way you want them to go enthusiatically." -General William Westmoreland
In engineering domains, a configuration is a particular arrangement of parts that reflect a realworld instance of a product. For example, one configuration is the particular choice of options and colors for a car. Version control, revision control, and change control are all names for activities closely related to configuration management. All these terms point to slightly different viewpoints of the way information is controlled, as well as changes over time. Configuration Management is a tool to manage a process for the creation of productsin this case, electronic documents.
The configured items that must be managed change over time. A configuration management system helps manage this change. Changes take place as a part is redesigned or a technical manual is revised for a new edition.
As projects grow more complex, formal configuration management will become necessary. Let's examine some of the basic functions that must be accomplished in creating a technical document. We will then look at how documents are managed during creation and what types of software can help coordinate and manage the process.
It is vital not to delude yourself into thinking that a configuration management system is going to solve your management problems. The system is only one portion of an overall solution. A clear set of organizational procedures and a clear understanding of exactly what needs to be configured are far more important parts of a managerial solution.
The first thing to do when planning a configuration management system is to determine exactly what is to be configured. List these socalled configuration items and tailor them to your project. If you don't make this list, the various steps in the document development process will be a waste of time. The configuration items will be associated with products in the development processmaster copy, working copy, and so on. (3)
Configuration management becomes complicated when the individuals involved work with different systems. Authors in different organizations will often be working with different document processing systems. When their work must be integrated into a final report or other product, the complexities can become tremendous. Careful planning that identifies the configuration items, can prevent this problem. If you know ahead of time that two different types of graphics must be integrated, you can plan reasonable methods to integrate the two in the final document.
In addition, make sure that the original graphics and diagrams are appropriately saved in the configuration management system for future modifications. Be sure to capture the original editable versions of illustrations, tables, and graphics. It is easy to lose the original editable versions of graphics and diagrams, especially when one organization produces the graphics and another integrates them into the final product.
During the creation, production, and publication of a document, one person may take on many roles. In larger organizations, separate individuals may perform these roles. In any case, it is important to delineate who is responsible for what and when. It is useful to clearly understand these roles and how a "configuration management system" can and cannot solve certain problems. Each person has a specific role.
The author'(s) create the document content and collaborates with others.
The editor changes stylistic and grammatical aspects of the document, but not the content.
The manager approves the document, often making editorial changes.
The producer merges illustrations and text (cut and paste) to produce cameraready output or electronic merging, assembly, and printing.
At each stage in the development of a document, a person performing a particular role must be in control of the current version of the document. When one person performs most of the roles, life is simple. However, in larger organizations and with complex documents, it is important to be clear about who owns a document and what precisely is the current document.
A configuration management system should help you manage and use the concepts of document ownership, signature authority, and security. In addition, the system should allow the grouping of files into a unit (often, a release of some sort) assigned a name or status such as DRAFT or RELEASE 7.
The configuration management system itself is primarily a management tool. It helps manage the complexity and coordination of many people working with shared information.
Now that we have identified the items to configure and understand the flow of these items through the organization, let's examine some software issues in configuration management.
8 . 2 . 3 Configuration Software
A wide variety of configuration management software systems are available. Similarly, a wide variety of document processing systems are available. Systems that integrate the two are not nearly as common. The ones that do exist are expensive, high-end "solutions."(4)
The range of configuration management systems is analogous to the range of electronic publishing systems. Publishing systems run the spectrum from batchlanguageoriented to WYSIWYG. Similarly, configuration management systems run the spectrum from suites of utilities to complete systems. Suites of utilities are functional. Some examples are those using the UNIX configuration control utilities Revision Control System (RCS) or Source Code Control System (SCCS), intended for source code control. These systems will require more of your technical staff’s time to tailor them for document processing.
Databases can be used to add configuration management functionality to your document processing system. Information about what task is being performed and who is in control of the documents, along with status information, can be used to monitor the progress of the document's production. A database can add the additional functionality missing from a document processing system for configuration purposes. Security, shared access, and traceability are some of the capabilities that you can add by integrating a database with your publishing practices.
The integration of a database with the publishing system does not have to be a technical challenge. A perfectly reasonable solution is to assign a secretary or other staff member the responsibility of updating information in the database. You must also establish proper management practices to ensure that information about the changing document status is passed along promptly. Clear, reasonable organizational practices are much more important than the features of any particular configuration management system.
Let's turn our attention to those aspects of the document processing system that can be used to help the configuration management process. Invariably, publishing systems have a variety of features that can be used for configuration management, even if they were not intended for such use.
All electronic publishing systems allow a variety of typographic controls. Strikeouts, underline, overline, outlines, shadows, font changes, and change bars can all indicate visually the changes to a document. On-line reviews can use color as effective feedback. Before you select a particular convention, be sure that all members of the work group can use the particular visual cue. It is useful to establish a few guidelines and perhaps a key to identify the sources of the comments and the markup. Keep in mind that the purpose of a visual markup system is to allow traceability on the printed page.
Decide on what you want to indicate with the visual changes. Two possibilities are (1) to indicate who is making a commentary on the document and (2) to indicate a change in the document's content on a version by version basis. When too many fonts and strikeouts are used, the page quickly becomes unreadable. The following figure is functional but ugly. A mechanism for rebaselining and cleaning up the document should be part of the configuration process.
The more capabilities a document processing system has, the more possibilities there are for various types of visual indications. Don't take this too far, however. A document with half a dozen types of markup will probably be unreadable. The purpose of a visual indication of change is to give the reader an easy way to review the changes.
The field of on-line review and commentary is also gaining momentum. Products such as Lotus Notes and Adobe's Acrobat let groups mark up documents for review. The Computer Aided Logistics Support (CALS) program industry support group and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) have committees looking into electronic review of standards and specifications.
One interesting line of research in the area of on-line commentary and annotations has drawn inspiration from 15thcentury glossed bibles. The visual principles used in these works have provided fertile ground for research in hypertext and computersupported cooperative work.(5) Just as monks over the centuries made comments upon biblical passages, your boss can make comments on your work.
Groupware, the coordinated work of many individuals, has been heralded as the next computer revolution. (See Section 8. 3 Groupware in this chapter for more information on Groupware.)
Research systems such as PREP (see previous illustration) and commercial products such as Rapport, Lotus Notes, BBN's Slate, and Instant Update are pointing the way into this largely uncharted territory. (Please see section Groupware in the appendix Resources.)
Another low-tech configuration management device is the page number. If you produce a large set of documents that change periodically, you certainly don't want to republish everything just because of a change in page numbers. Two common techniques to avoid this problem are to use chapter-page numbering and point pages.
Point pages are simply inserted pages. For example, page 23.1 might be a new page
inserted between pages 23 and 24. This technique does not require any reprinting of pages, and the reader may simply insert the page where it belongs. Once a year or so, the point pages are consolidated into "real" pages, and the document is republished.
Chapter-page numbering sequentially numbers all pages within one chapter. For example, page 4-23 refers to page 23 of chapter 4. This numbering scheme can also be used for figures and tables. New pages simply force the republication of individual chapters (or sections), rather than the entire document.
Some electronic publishing systems allow the user to define an attribute and associate that attribute with portions of text. A good example of this is a capability called conditional text in the FrameMaker publishing system.
Conditional text can be used to maintain different configurations of a document. For example, a TOP SECRET document can be maintained as both secret and public versions by marking all the secret portions with a tag secret. The secret sections can be hidden and printed out only when required. A single document is maintained that contains both versions.
The userdefined attributes can associate comments with specific individuals. Thus the attribute LarryComments can be used to identify Larry's comments. Depending on the system's capabilities, you may be able to print or view only the portions of the text associated with a particular attribute. This kind of usage leads naturally to groupware types of applications.
One important set of international standards for quality assurance and management is called ISO 9000. As part of the ISO 9000 suite, document management is required.(6) It includes:
organizations.
Document management is critical to the successful completion of ISO 9000 certification. "Your organization shall control all your quality systems documents to assure availability of documented information to those who require it," states ISO Standard 9001.
The ISO 9000 quality assurance system includes 20 system elements documented in a pyramid of policies, procedures, and work instructions. Notice that many of these elements place requirements on a document management system. From the QBS Web site
(7):
The 20 ISO 9000 Quality Assurance System Elements
An ISO 9000 compliant quality assurance system includes up to 20 system elements documented in a pyramid of inter-connected policies, procedures and work instructions. Of the three system models (ISO 9001, 9002, and ISO 9003), ISO 9001 requires all 20 system elements. The following summary is condensed from the International Standard document ISO 9001, second edition, reference number ISO 9001:1994(E).
1. Management responsibility:
to define, document, and implement a policy for quality.
2. Quality system:
to establish, document, and maintain a quality system which includes a quality manual, system procedures, and quality planning.
3. Contract review:
to establish and maintain documented procedures for contract review.
4. Design control:
to establish and maintain documented procedures to control and verify the design of the product to ensure conformance to specified requirements.
5. Document and data control:
to establish and maintain documented procedures to control all documents and data (including hard copy and electronic media), including such documents as standards and customer drawings.
6. Purchasing:
to establish and maintain documented procedures to ensure that purchased product, associated documents, and data conform to requirements. Sub-contractors are to be evaluated and selected on their ability to meet subcontract requirements and the type and extent of control exercised by the supplier over sub-contractors is to be defined.
7. Control of customer-supplied product:
to establish and maintain documented procedures for the control of
verification, storage and maintenance of customer-supplied product provided for incorporation into the supplies or for related activities.
8. Product identification and traceability:
where appropriate, to establish and maintain documented procedures for identifying the product from receipt and during all stages of production, delivery and installation.
9. Process control:
to identify and plan the production, installation and servicing processes which directly affect quality, and to ensure these processes are carried out under controlled conditions.
10. Inspection and testing:
to establish and maintain documented procedures for inspection and testing activities to in order to verify that the specified requirements for the product are met.
11. Control of inspection, measuring and test equipment:
to establish and maintain documented procedures to control, calibrate and maintain inspection, measuring and test equipment (including test software) used by the supplier to demonstrate the conformance of product to the specified requirements.
12. Inspection and test status:
the inspection and test status of product shall be identified and maintained throughout the production, installation and servicing of the product to ensure that only product that has passed the required inspections and tests (or released under an authorized concession) is dispatched, used or installed.
13. Control of non-conforming product:
to establish and maintain documented procedures to ensure that product that does not conform to specified requirements is prevented from un-intended use or installation.
14. Corrective and preventive action:
to establish and maintain documented procedures for implementing corrective action in the handling of customer complaints, product non-conformities, and the application of controls to ensure corrective action is taken and that it is effective. Preventive action procedures will detect, analyze, and eliminate potential causes of non-conformities.
15. Handling, storage, packaging, preservation and delivery:
to establish and maintain documented procedures to prevent damage or deterioration of product.
16. Control of quality records:
to establish and maintain documented procedures for identification, collection, indexing, access, filing, storage, maintenance and disposition of quality records. Quality records shall be maintained to demonstrate conformance to specified requirements and the effective operation of the quality system.
17. Internal quality audits:
to establish and maintain documented procedures for planning and implementing
internal quality audits to verify whether quality activities and related results comply with planned arrangements and to determine the effectiveness of the quality system.
18. Training: ■ . '■ ■
to establish and maintain documented procedures for identifying training needs and provide for the training of all personnel performing activities affecting quality. Appropriate records of training shall be maintained.
19. Servicing:
where servicing is a specified requirement, to establish and maintain documented procedures for performing, verifying and reporting that the servicing meets the specified requirements.
20.. Statistical techniques:
the supplier identify the need for statistical techniques required for establishing, controlling and verifying process capability and product characteristics, and shall establish and maintain documented procedures to implement and control their application.
The ISO 9000 documentation 1 pyramid .....
The 20 quality assurance elements, or fewer elements in the case of ISO 9002 and ISO 9003, are incorporated in an interconnected documentation pyramid. The documents are indexed so that changes at one level do not require changes at a higher level, but may require changes at a lower' level.
ISO 9000 Documentation Pyramid Level 1: the ' quality manual and quality system elements
At the top of the pyramid is the quality assurance manual, which contains the corporate policy and ■ statement on quality. Also included are brief statements describing how each of ■ the applicable system elements are implemented in accordance with the company quality policy. The primary function of the 40 to 50 page quality manual is to succinctly define the company's quality assurance system to employees, management, and the ISO 9000 Registrar. ■ It also acts as an excellent sales tool. ■ The quality manual can be included with responses to proposals and other sales initiatives. It clearly confirms to prospective clients that they will be dealing with a quality organization that can provide goods or services in conformance with the clients' requirements.
Level 2: quality assurance procedures
The second level of the documentation pyramid contains quality assurance procedures that describe how, when, and where the quality system element activities are conducted, along with who is responsible for conducting them. Typically, each procedure is a few pages long.
Level 3: quality assurance work instructions
The third documentation level includes the detailed instructions for the performance of the work done by the company or organization. The work instructions include design specifications, drawings, service instructions, operating procedures, process sheets, etc.
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"I'm not good in groups. It’s difficult to work in a group when you ’re omnipotent.”- Q, Star Trek
Groupware,(8) the software that assists in the collaboration of groups of people, is one of the latest application areas to get into the mainstream. It has been around, most notably with Lotus Notes for a while but the Web and ubiquitous access to the Internet is fueling its grown.
Clearly, the grand-daddy of groupware products is Lotus Notes. Notes, however, provides much more than is currently viable with the Web. Enterprises use Notes in secure environments to support business processes. Product development, sales, order processing, and technical support need the support of sophisticated work-flow software. Routing information through discrete phases and through a management chain is the key. Web/ Notes interoperability is moving towards this end with the InterNotes product, which can publish a Notes database on the Web.
"Groupware Grows Up," the cover story of the March 4, 1996 issue of Information Week,
(9) points out that Lotus Notes is not the only game in town any more. Products from Netscape, Microsoft, Novell, and Hewlett-Packard all address this growing market. In addition the links between collaborative work products and the Internet are getting stronger.
Microsoft is going after Lotus Notes with its Exchange product. Clearly, Exchange is not as robust as the timetested Notes. However it does have clear advantages in its integration with Microsoft Office. Most significantly, the Notes server can run on several types of platforms, whereas the Exchange server is tightly bound to Windows NT. "Exchange Versus Notes" by Sean Gallagher also in the March 4, 1996 issue of Information Week does a thorough comparison of the two.
Netscape's acquisition of Collabra Software with CollabraShare conferencing software gives Netscape a running start in this frenzied market. Collabra Share lets you organize information into a set of "forums." In each forum, groups can discuss relevant topics. Information discussed in the topics can later be retrieved via a search engine, and related topics can be linked. An important feature is the flexibility of forum management. The forums can allow anonymous input and moderated information and can be used for brainstorming or customer support.
Collabra Share'spresentation of "forums” for collaborative discussions
DEC is also entering this market with the Workgroup Web product. It, too, allows for online conferencing. It also provides tools for reaching consensus and decision making, such as a real-time polling feature to give a group instant voting results. It works with many existing Web browsers and servers. An interesting development feature is the Software Development Kit (SDK), which is based on the Tcl scripting language (widely used in the UNIX and X windows world).
A new product called CoolTalk by InSoft is being bundled with the new Netscape Navigator (version 3) called Atlas. CoolTalk is a suite of utilities for collaborative computing. It contains a realtime audio facility like the various Internet phone programs. More significantly, it includes a whiteboard so people can draw on a shared surface and see what each other is doing.
CoolTalk utilities, audio tool, and shared white board
The ability to communicate using audio and shared data spaces like a white board should improve communications among geographicallydispersed groups. The amazing part is that this all functions on a PC! Only a few short years ago, these capabilities cost many thousands of dollars, and you had to have a high-end workstation.
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Intranets, an internal Internet Web of documents and information restricted to employees of an organization, are becoming a major tool for enterprises. More than one in five large corporations now run Intranets, according to Forrester Research, Inc., in Cambridge, Mass.
Security concerns are a key motivation for the creation of an Intranet. Simply put, the Internet is not very secure and probably won't be for some time. A security infrastructure is slowly being deployed however, vendors and users alike are not used to authentication, single-use password, and encryption as a normal part of doing business on the Internet. Security concerns aside, Intranets are an effective and relatively simple mechanism to improve communications within an enterprise.
According to a Feb. 26, 1996 Business Week cover story, "Here comes the Intranet," some example of Intranets in use are:
• Kiosks at Compaq Computer Corp. where employees can check on benefits, savings and 401(k) plans.
• DreamWorks SKG (the new Spielberg, Katzenberg and Geffen studio) has Netscape browsers on all desktops so production managers and artists can check on the daily status of projects and coordinate scenes.
• Ford Motor Co., where an Intranet links design centers in Asia, Europe and the U.
S., and engineers collaborated on the design of the 1996 Taurus.
• FedEx, learning from its highly successful public Web, (which is estimated to save $2 million a year) has 60 intranets created by and for employees. They are equipping all 30,000 office employees with Web browsers to provide access to the slew of news sites.
• Silicon Graphics, with an Intranet called "Silicon Junction," allows employees to access more than two dozen corporate databases.
Netscape's Web site has an extensive set of "company profiles" and demos that highlighting "Intranets in Action." Their impressive list of companies using Intranets includes: 3M, Allen-Bradley, AT&T, Electronic Arts, Eli Lilly, Genentech, McDonnell Douglas, Mobil, National Semiconductor, and more.
The explosion of Intranets will cause a corresponding explosion for Web server software. Zona Research estimates that by 1998 revenue for Web server software, the backbone of any Intranet, will be at $8 billion compared with $2 billion for Internets.
Many companies already have the infrastructure necessary for Intranets. A Local Area Network (LAN), a Web server with browsers for the desktop, and a firewall to keep people out are the core elements of an Intranet. The Web, which has already provided a unifying view of the Internet, can provide the same service to an enterprise.
Most organizations have jumbled collections of information technologies serving different functions. Payroll, accounting, engineering, purchasing, employee benefits, travel expenses, and so on can often be found to function on separate, socalled "islands of automation." The Web presents a unique opportunity to unify these systems into an apparently single system. Unification of these systems is not simple, but a path now exists, an architecture of sorts, which, if followed, can give users better more timely access to companywide data, improving communications on the way.
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People are turning to document imaging in an effort to manage the mountains of paper generated every day in this age of the so-called paperless office. In part, document imaging can be viewed as paper management in electronic form. Properly used, however, document imaging can become much more than electronic paper. Electronic documents created from document images can be indexed, searched, and accessed in a variety of ways to make their information more useful and valuable.
One particularly interesting document imaging software system is Adobe's Acrobat Capture. Its idea is to scan documents and have them converted into PDF (Adobe Acrobat format) files. Of course, document imaging systems can rarely recognize all the text and convert it to computer text, so Acrobat takes an interesting approach. Basically it punts and if the system can't figure out what a character is, it replaces it with the image of the character. Using this approach, the document will keep the correct look, although, of course, there may be problems with searches. It's a clever trade-off
Before you embark on an imaging conversion project it would be useful to consider the following questions:
• Did you determine what you intended to do with the images? Your use of the documents will affect the storage and processing of the images.
• Do the images meet all your legal requirements? Some industries require documents that are valid from a legal standpoint. Documents may sometimes be required as evidence, and electronic documents may not be valid.(11)
• Does your organization have the infrastructure to support the new types of skilled staff needed to work with the new system? Your existing staff may need more technical training. A training budget should be part of the project, and retraining should be part of the project plan and organizational goals.
To become involved in document imaging, you presumably already have a large collection of paper documents. These documents must be converted into electronic images in a process known as backfile conversion. According to one particularly practical article, this process involves the following five steps:(12)
Document PreparationOrganize and discard old documents.
ScanningPurchase an appropriate scanner for your documents. Autofeed scanners are a myth; hands-on feeding is a reality.
IndexingCreate all potential identifiers, using current technology such as autoindexing, OCR, and bar codes. Where possible, use existing databases to retrieve additional information, such as employee information from an ID.
Quality AssuranceManage the process carefully; conversion is tedious and difficult. Get it right the first time, because reprocessing is expensive.
Image IntegrationYour goal is a system to handle daily throughput. Service bureaus may be appropriate for the backfile work while you focus on the future system.
As part of the document conversion process, paper documents are scanned, and images are converted into electronic files and kept in large electronic filing cabinets.(13) The document images may be recognized by optical character recognition (OCR) software and converted into computer interpretable text, which can be indexed and searched.
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According to the news magazine Imaging World, "office workers spend 60% of the day dealing with paper documents and U.S. businesses continue to create over one billion pages of paper each day."(14) That's a lot of trees. The same article categorizes the imaging market into five components:
• image input
• image storage
• image management and processing
• image communications
• image output and display
Let's examine three aspects of these components. First, the OCR part of the input component; second, text retrieval, part of the management and processing component; finally, the media issues that are part of the storage component.
Paper documents consisting mainly of text represent a document conversion opportunity. It would be nice to get that text into your computer in a manipulable form such as ASCII text.(15) The two ways to do this are to retype the information or to use OCR (Optical Character Recognition). Retyping is not as absurd as it may seem at first glance. Scores of
"offshore" workers provide inexpensive labor and a number of companies provide this service. (see section Appendix A Resources in the appendix Resources for more information.) You can imagine that proof reading the material is excruciating. Nevertheless, rekeying is a costeffective option.
The more civilized approach, OCR, has come a long way. Software and hardware packages are now available for all classes of computer equipment, from PCs to workstations. Recognition systems can interpret a wide variety of fonts. The accuracy of some systems can be improved by training them to recognize particular fonts and the specific characteristics of the documents.
A basic reason to convert paper documents into electronic files is to improve access to the information. After a set of documents has been scanned and the text recognized and converted into ASCII, what's next? Indexing and the creation of a fulltext retrieval database is one possibility.
What is a fulltext database, and how is one used? As the name implies, a fulltext database allows you to search the entire text of a document. Every word is indexed for rapid retrieval. Often, the index takes up as much space as the text. Storage media like CD-ROMs with over 600Mb of available space are perfect for these types of databases. However this involves the classic trade-off between speed and space.
To build a fulltext database, you go through the following steps:
1. Assemble all text into a common area, such as a single directory.
2. Identify and possibly mark up, in any required format, the headings, sections, and subsections that provide a hierarchical structure to the document. (Typically, this is used for the user interface ofthe text retrieval engine.)
3. Identify the "kill list" words you do not wish to search, such as "the," "and," and so on.
4. Run the database builder software to create the indexes and generate the user interface for the particular set of data.
In a typical case, the textual information that originated with a set of documents is processed by the database builder software to produce a searchable database. A user interface or run-time systemas opposed to the builder systemis used to search through the text in a variety of ways. The searching flexibility is an important characteristic of fulltext retrieval systems. (Please see section Text Retrieval in the appendix Resources for some references to these products.)
Textual searching can take many forms. The complexity of searching can range from a simple word search to boolean queries with proximity distance and regular expressions. OK, I'll explain that obnoxious jargon.
A boolean query (or search) is something like the following:
Find all occurrences of the words
"your mother wears" AND
("army boots" OR "high heel shoes")
The query above would find the phrases:
"your mother wears army boots"
"your mother wears high heel shoes, what a fashion statement"
The query would not find:
"your mother wears some funky army boots"
A proximity search is a way of specifying words that you want to locate that are not necessarily next to each other. They would have to be within some specified distance of each other. Distance is described as a stated number of words.
Regular expressions are a formal way of using a pattern to represent many letters. You are probably already familiar with the concept of wild carding for file names. For example, in DOS, when you ask to list all files names that start with the letter F, you type the command:
dir F*
The * is a simple "regular expression" that means match 0 or more of any character. More complex regular expressions are commonly used in the UNIX operating system and as a way to specify text for retrieval and editing.
These types of searches were previously used only by techno-geeks. Now however with the advent of the Web doing them is becoming a more important skill. Many of the Internet Starting point services, such as Yahoo and Open Text, can take advantage of more complex queries, helping you to find what you're after faster.
