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Subject:Re: ratio of devs to writers From:Bill Swallow <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 10 Mar 2005 08:51:38 -0500
> I'm curious about the ratio of developers to writers in your company and
> roughly how many "pages" you produce. For example, in the article "Tech
> Writers As Sales Reps" from Gordon Graham, he suggests 8 developers to 1
> writer in a company that produces about 3000 pages; so about 1000 pages per
> writer (personally, I think this ratio should be much lower). I'd like some
> other feedback on how do you estimate your resource requirements.
Pages of documentation is irrelevent. It's all to do with the
complexity of the products and what info needs to be delivered to
users of those products. Product design also has a lot to do with it.
The better the design, the less of a need for writers. You'll never
hit "absolute zero", but you can get pretty low.
It also depends on what writers are expected to produce.
Counts and ratios are meaningless. They inform you of what others
SUGGEST or of what others are doing, but have very little bearing on
YOU and YOUR ORGANIZATION. You need to take stock in what you're
expected to deliver, the time you are expected to deliver it in, and
the complexity of your tasks, and then determine if you have too many,
too few, or just enough writers.
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