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Subject:Metrics for Technical Writing.? From:Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca> To:TECHWR-L <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>, "Smith, Kevin T" <kevin -dot- t -dot- smith -at- bankofamerica -dot- com> Date:Mon, 24 Apr 2006 16:53:23 -0400
Kevin Smith wondered: <<Are there any examples available for metrics
that represent technical writing? I would like to collect baseline
numbers and track our activity in an IT Development Shop.>>
My take on this is that metrics are generally useless unless you know
what you're trying to accomplish by collecting them and choose metrics
that support that purpose. Moreover, industry-wide metrics are
meaningless unless you can confirm that they apply to your specific
situation; compare, for example, the difference in writing productivity
between the often <ahem> casual documentation process for open-source
software and the insanely intense process that a W3W or IEEE standard
goes through.
If you want useful metrics, you need to narrowly define your goals,
rigorously develop a metric that tells you whether you're succeeding,
and only then ask for data from comparable situations to see how good
your benchmark is. Anything else is "lies, damned lies, and
statistics". Honest scientists will tell you that quantifying something
does not by itself make that something meaningful.
I can tell you, for example, that my editing productivity varies by
more than 100% depending on the nature of the manuscript and the
author's diligence--that's based on something like 10 years of
productivity data for literally hundreds of authors from around the
world. I can also tell you that, all else being equal, I'm unusually
fast given how heavily I edit. (I know this because I tag-team edit
with a goodly number of editors around the world, and know their
productivities.) So would my editing stats be meaningful to you? Not a
chance.
A few thoughts to point you in the right direction:
http://www.geoff-hart.com/resources/2004/metrics.htm Have a look, then feel free to ask more specific questions (here on the
list, so you can get a range of opinions).
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