Technical Writing: Proposals, Reports, E-mails, SWOT Analyses

Courses on Business Communications: General and Technical
  • Course:Technical Writing: Proposals, Reports, E-mails, SWOT Analyses
  • Course ID:TWRT Duration:2 days Where: Your Office (7+ Persons)
  • Available as a private, customized course for your group at your offices or ours and in some cases as a WebLive(TM) class.

  • Download Course Description (PDF)

Course Outline

Day 1:  The Basics

  • The writing process
    • Defining the message
    • Organizing one’s thoughts
    • Outlining using a creative approach
    • Creating the first draft
    • Rewriting
    • The 24-hour test
    • Creating the final draft
    • Common errors
    • Group exercises
  • Sentence structure
    • The four parts of every sentence
    • Active versus passive styles
    • Subject/verb agreement
    • Eliminating semantic noise
    • Appropriate sentence length
    • Common errors
    • Group exercises
  • Paragraph structure
    • The topic sentence
    • Supporting sentences
    • Eliminating or moving unnecessary sentences
    • Internal consistency
    • Sentence-to-sentence continuity
    • Common errors
    • Group exercises
  • Merging text and graphics
    • The ease of importing graphics
    • Graphics types and selection
    • Establishing the graphic’s message
    • Digital image considerations
    • Captioning graphics
    • Graphics location
    • Group exercises
  • Reviewing and  rewriting revisited
    • Commonly misspelled words
    • Abbreviation practices
    • Finding and fixing spelling and grammar errors
    • Font selection
    • Attention to detail
    • The consequences of misspelling and grammar errors
    • Motivation
    • Group exercise
  • E-mail etiquette
    • Spelling, grammar, capitalization, and punctuation
    • Inappropriate e-mail topics
    • Maintaining a professional tone
    • Distribution
    • Unique e-mail hazards
    • Common e-mail errors

Day 2:  Proposals, Progress Reports, SWOT Analyses, and Course Wrap-Up

  • Proposals
    • Proposal purposes
    • Defining RFP/RFQ requirements
    • Finding hidden requirements
    • Requirements responsiveness
    • Compliance cross-indices
    • Avoiding requirements regurgitation
    • Proposal scoring schemes
    • Proposal organization
    • Proposal themes
    • Identifying and projecting strengths without arrogance
    • Proposal scheduling
    • Error-free proposals
    • The importance of timely submittal
    • Proposal reviews
    • Proposal pricing considerations
    • Executive summaries
    • Common proposal mistakes
    • Group exercises
  • Progress reports
    • Progress report purposes
    • Progress report organization
    • The importance of factual reporting
    • Time-phased, milestone-based plans
    • The spend plan
    • Using a single graphic to communicate status
    • Financial and schedule variance identification
    • Variance recovery approaches
    • Identifying cost and schedule risk
    • Risk management approaches
    • Estimating cost and schedule at completion
    • Asking for help
    • Maintaining a positive tone
    • Executive summaries
    • Appropriate progress report length
    • Common progress report mistakes
    • Group exercises
  • Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) reports
    • Objectively identifying strengths without arrogance
    • Internal strength perceptions
    • Client strength perceptions
    • Identifying weaknesses
    • Internal weakness perceptions
    • Client weakness perceptions
    • Describing weaknesses without offending
    • Finding, evaluating, and prioritizing opportunities
    • Seeking and hearing external perceptions
    • Realistic threat identification
    • What-if analysis
    • Threat management approaches
    • Organizing the SWOT report
    • Executive summaries
    • Common SWOT analysis errors
    • Group exercises
  • Concluding activities
    • Brevity’s advantages
    • Professionalism
    • Recap, Q/A, and evaluations
Course Overview

Course in a Nutshell

This course brings together important concepts that allow organizations to clearly communicate through proposals, progress reports, SWOT analyses, and other written documents.
The course focuses on applying clear technical writing concepts to optimize understanding, eliminate confusion, and meet organization objectives. It utilizes real-life case studies and examples from your organization to help you understand how to write clearly. At the end of the course, you will have a good understanding of what clear technical communications is all about. The course is taught by a published author/engineer who teaches technical writing at the college level.

 

Learn How To

  • Write winning proposals.
  • Write clear progress reports.
  • Write Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) reports.
  • Create easily-understood, error-free written communications.
  • Project a winning and professional image in all written communications.
Audience / Prerequisites

Aimed At

This course is aimed at marketing, sales, program management, design, engineering, quality assurance, and manufacturing personnel who write reports, proposals, and other technical and sales documents.

 

Prerequisites

While there are no formal prerequisites, the course assumes English language proficiency.