Engineering Words: Communicating clearly in the workplace

Engineering Words Front Cover
Inside Cover
Copyright Notices
Contents
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Chapter 1. Welcome
	You can learn to communicate
	Terms we use in this book
	Who is this book for?
Chapter 2. Clear Communication Guidelines
	Clear communication matters in the business world
	The basics
		What’s in a sentence?
		Active voice
		Present tense
		Second person
		Repetition
		Reduce the reading level
		User-focused, user-centric
		Short is good
			Short sentences
			Short paragraphs
			Short sections
		Headings
	Building sentences and paragraphs
		Topic sentences
		The rest of the paragraph
	Example paragraph
		Parsing the example
Chapter 3. The Business Context of Communication
	Writing for professors/peer reviewers
	Writing for your boss/business peers/the public
	So what is the business context?
	The financial context: the flow of money in a business
		Revenue
		COGS/variable costs
		Gross profit
		Overhead/GA/fixed costs
		Net profit
		Retained earnings
	Communication in the context of the flow of money
	Historical/technical context: prior art and problem-solving
	Products solve problems
	Personal context: the technology adoption curve
		Innovators
		Early adopters
		The chasm
		Early majority/pragmatists
		Late majority/conservatives
		Skeptics/laggards
	Communicating in the context of solving problems
	Practical application: the business case
		Straight return on investment (ROI)
		Cost avoidance
Chapter 4. Résumés and Cover Letters
	Cover letters
		Structure of a business letter
			The addresses
			The date and salutation
			The body
			The complimentary close
		Telling your cover letter story
	Résumés
		The job search environment
		Professional vs intern/first job résumés
		Structure and content
			Objective
			Special skills
			Work history
			Education
Chapter 5. Flow of a Project in a Company
	Project start
	Business requirements
	Functional and technical specification phases
	Development (and testing) phase
	Reality check meeting
	Delivery phase
	The Secret
Chapter 6. Designing Effective Presentations
	Designing your slides
		Some important terms
		Title slides
		Outlines
		Slide structure
			DO
			DON’T
		Text formatting
			Font size
			Font attributes
			Font type
			A last note about fonts and text
		Colors
			Contrast
			Structure and emphasis
			Setting mood
		Graphs
			Choose the correct graph type
			Format the graph well
		Spelling and grammar
		Conclusion
		Questions?
Chapter 7. Handling Yourself and the Room in Presentations
	A day or two before the presentation
	Right before the presentation
	The presentation
		Manage yourself while you talk
			Use your body
			Use your voice
		It’s time for questions
		Politics in presentations
	Finishing up
Chapter 8. Human Cognition
	About humans
	The physical world and biology
		Our vision
		The world happens in human brains
			Preattentive process
			Attentive process
			Combining preattentive with attentive
			Standards are preattentive
		Other processes
			Cocktail party effect
			Sensory adaptation
		Learning theory
			Experience
			Schemas
			Habits
			Interference
			Cognitive load
		Humans require explanations
Chapter 9. Constructing Explanations
	Explanations and our brains
	Design and perception: visually explanations
		Foundational concept: visual space on a page
			Black space
			Gray space
			White space
		Principle 1: perception is active, fast, and largely preattentive
			Using Principle 1 when designing visual explanations
		Principle 2: figure and ground
			Using Principle 2 when designing visual explanations
		Principle 3: grouping
			Using Principle 3 when designing visual explanations
	Document to the question: cognitively constructed explanations
		What are the four user questions?
			Why should I care?
			What is it?
			How do I do it?
			Why did it do that?
Chapter 10. Personas and Scenarios
	Why do you care?
	You can’t develop for yourself or for everyone
		What are preferred input modes?
		How do I improve my communication using VARK?
			V = Visual
			A = Auditory
			R = Reading
			K = Kinesthetic
	Input modes versus learning theory
		Why should I care about input modes?
	Personas
		How do I create a persona?
		How do I use a persona?
	Scenarios
		Requirements are implied
	Wrong personas and wrong scenarios
	What do you do with personas and scenarios?
Chapter 11. Writing Functional Specifications
	The structure of a functional specification
		User guides
		Technical specifications
		Functional specifications
	Deconstructing functions and features
	Writing functions and features
		Priority
		Description
			What is it?
			Why does [persona] want it?
			How do we do it?
			What can go wrong?
		Action-result table
		Business and functional requirements
Chapter 12. Testing Your Products
	Organizational styles
	Why test?
		What is a defect?
		What can be tested?
		Risk analysis and its effect on testing
			Calculating risk
		Reporting defects
	Creating test cases and test suites
	Deconstructing test cases
	What makes a good test case?
		Test cases are like recipes
	Structure of test cases
		Writing test cases for functions and features
			Test plan, suite, case naming and/or numbering
			Description
				What are you testing?
				Why does [persona] need this to work?
				How do you test this?
			How do you know this feature or function passed the test?
			Materials
			Prerequisite tests
			Action-result table
			Target pass/fail
Appendix A. References
	Bibliography
Index
Colophon
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