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Re: Estimation of the number of pages to be written per day
Subject:Re: Estimation of the number of pages to be written per day From:Peter Neilson <neilson -at- alltel -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Wed, 22 Dec 2004 06:31:39 -0500
I can write 100 pages a day as long as they don't have to make sense.
Actual worthwhile documentation, tested to see if it's what is
needed and whether it covers all the cases, and is mostly true,
well I think I'm lucky to do a page a day. (Mind you, I've
never actually counted. Each day is always atypical, and thus
inappropriate for study. If I ever found an appropriate "typical"
day and attached my pages-per-day meter to it, the metering would
skew the result. But a typical day is so rare that it, per se,
is atypical.)
Many, if not most projects start with the re-use of existing text.
My current project is nearly done, at about two months, right on
schedule. There has been very little writing--mostly it's gathering
existing memos and assembling them into a single presentation,
cutting out redundant and off-target material, and writing a bit
to fill in the gaps and maybe straighten out grammar. A lot of
time is spent waiting to pounce on busy SMEs to get them to review
obscure paragraphs.
My method for estimating is to break the entire task down into
subtasks, each of which can be understood well enough to be
estimated. If I cannot understand it, it needs further division.
Once I have the estimates for all the little pieces, I add 'em up.
The resulting number always looks too big, especially to those
who are not doing the documentation. I RESIST THE TEMPTATION to
round it down. If anything, it'll need some time added to it,
like (for instance) if part of the plan calls for getting the
documentation reviewed during a major holiday season.
On Tue, 21 Dec 2004 20:10:46 -0800 (PST), Abhijit Sinha <worksbspl1 -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
1. How do you estimate the optimum number of pages
that a technical writer may write per day with all
information available using MS Word, RoboHelp, and
Framemaker so as to generate minimum re-work after
review?
2. Can u please let me know if there are any
standards, methods, links that provides u such
standard measurements or estimations to plan work for
your team?
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