Cheryl Jasper

Senior Technical Writer

cheryl@cjasper.com

Cheryl Jasper has over 25 years of experience as both an individual contributor and as a manager of technical documentation, training, technical support, and quality assurance. She has been involved in all phases of the product development life cycle for both custom-built and commercially available products for a range of very technical to non-technical users.

As an independent consultant since 1995, Cheryl has designed and developed print, online, and web-based documentation for a variety of hardware and software products and services. She has also done user interface design for web sites and software applications and has designed and implemented wikis.

In addition to computer-related documentation, Cheryl has held a significant role in designing, developing, and producing quality system documents that conform to FDA, ISO, and GMP standards for major medical device manufacturers. She has also been involved with several 510(k) submissions to the FDA for medical devices, and implemented an electronic document control system for a medical device manufacturer with multiple geographic locations.

Cheryl is proficient on Windows, Macintosh, and Unix/Linux platforms, prefers to edit HTML directly (although she is proficient in Dreamweaver as well), and makes extensive use of CSS, FrameMaker, Word, RoboHELP, RoboHTML, Visio Pro, Photoshop, Excel, and PowerPoint in her work. She has also used code control systems, such as Subversion, CVS, and Perforce. She learns new tools and applications very quickly.

• Designed and wrote all of the documentation for version 3.0 of Google Earth Enterprise, including an administration guide (installation and configuration), Fusion reference guide, Fusion tutorial, and version 3.0 upgrade guide. Google Earth Enterprise allows businesses and organizations to prepare, publish, and restrict access to their own data in Google Earth. Used Framemaker, Photoshop, Visio, and Dreamweaver.
   
• Designed and wrote all online help and printable documentation for Vontu products, a series of data security products (hardware and software) that expose confidential information on unprotected file servers, web servers, and desktops, monitor network traffic for confidential data, and prevent confidential data from ever leaving the company. The documentation included context-sensitive online help, a user’s guide, an installation guide, and several smaller technical documents. Served as Vontu’s documentation department for six releases. Used RoboHTML and MS Word.
   
• Developed the Access Control Configuration Guide for SAP’s Access Control application. This guide pulled together configuration instructions for four components of the system that were previously separate applications. Used MS Word.
   
• Wrote and produced a suite of printable and online documentation for Verano's Iluminar, a data security system, including documentation of both server administration and client applications. The doc set included an installation/administration guide, a user’s guide, and a reference manual. Used Framemaker.
   
• Designed and wrote customer and technical documentation for Ricoh's eCabinet, an enterprise document management system designed to capture, digitally file, and search documents. Responsible for all printed documentation and online help, SDK documentation, and an internal technical guide to how the eCabinet works. Used Framemaker, Photoshop, and RoboHelp for Windows.
   
• Contributed to the documentation for NetMetrix, a network performance management system for Hewlett-Packard (now Agilent Technologies). Used Framemaker.

• Wrote much of the content for Yahoo! online tutorials for Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! PhotoMail, Yahoo! Messenger, Yahoo! Browser, Yahoo! Address Book, and other applications available to subscribers. Ported these tutorials for Yahoo! partners, including SBC, Verizon, Rogers (in Canada), and BT (in the UK). Used Dreamweaver, including complex templates and libraries, and Photoshop.
   
• Designed and wrote all documentation for FileMaker's applications for business-specific tasks. Contributed to user interface and functional design for these applications. Responsible for all documentation for three releases. Used Framemaker.
   
• Developed the content for a 4-day vRep developer training course for Neuromedia (later NativeMinds; appears to have disappeared from the market now) and wrote the associated participant guide. vRep was a web-based "bot" that users could program with a question taxonomy that mapped similar questions back to a core answer, making it possible to provide answers to thousands of questions with only hundreds of answers. Used Framemaker.
   
• Designed user interfaces and wrote functional specifications for several courseware development tools used by Pensare (now defunct) and their customers to create web-based management training courses, including survey builder and skill builder workshop tools. Worked primarily in XML.
   
• Wrote and produced a series of ScreenCam "movies" as product demos for Business Evolution (now part of Kana Communications).
   
• Wrote documentation for the eCabinet plug-in for Ricoh's DeskTopBinder product. Used Framemaker.

• Lead writer and project manager for a large process documentation project for Celera Diagnostics. Redesigned manufacturing processes and developed quality system documents for all FDA-regulated procedures, ensuring the company's compliance with FDA regulations, ISO standards, and GMP. Produced over 2000 documents, including standard operating procedures, manufacturing instructions, test methodologies, quality control specifications, and equipment procedures. Used MS Word and Visio.
   
• Analyzed the quality system documentation requirements of Osmetech Molecular Diagnostics and then designed and custom configured SmartDoc, SmartCAPA, and SmartComplaints. These modules are part of SmartSolve, a regulatory compliance software application manufactured by Pilgrim Software. Responsible for managing the design, implementation, training, validation, and initial use of the system, replacing the company's paper-based quality system. Also responsible for developing quality system documents for FDA-regulated procedures, ensuring the company's compliance with FDA regulations, ISO standards, and GMP.
   
• Wrote all of the quality system procedures for Agencourt Bioscience Corporation from flow diagrams created by a co-consultant. Agencourt provides genomic services and nucleic acid purification products. Used MS Word and Visio.
   
• Designed and wrote the product documentation for Phormax's (now owned by Alara) 510(k) submission to the FDA for approval to build a computed radiography (CR) imaging system which generates direct digital, filmless, two-dimensional radiographs for general use in the x-ray imaging market. Used Framemaker.

• Member of the software design team for one of Varian Oncology Systems' major radiation therapy treatment delivery systems; wrote the documentation for that product's 510(k) submission, which later won FDA approval for a multi-million dollar development project. Used Framemaker.
   
• Designed and prototyped the user interface for Ricoh's NOMA, a web-based, enterprise-wide device relationship management (DRM) tool for networked office peripherals. Worked primarily in HTML.

During the 13 years prior to becoming a consultant, Cheryl developed her technical and managerial skills in the following ways:

• Established and managed the documentation, technical support, and quality assurance groups for MathWorks, the leading developer of numerical calculation and data visualization software used by the scientific and engineering communities.
   
• Managed the development and production of a 3200-page, 16-volume documentation set for Clarify CRM, a complex client-server, relational database application now owned by Amdocs.
   
• Managed the documentation, training, and customer support groups for Mirror Systems, a custom software developer who produced some of the earliest multimedia titles using their own proprietary authoring system.
   
• Co-founded Choice Documentation, providing documentation services for systems and software companies in the Boston area in the early 1980s.

In addition to her technical writing work, Cheryl does web site design and development and spends her free time in the worlds of photography and sailing.

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