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Has anybody addressed the issue of metrics in documentation; that is,
how do you effectively and accurately measure a writer's productivity?
This isn't sales, in which you can count the number of phone calls,
client calls, dollars brought in, etc. For writing, it's rather absurd
to count the number of keystokes, pages, documents, etc. <snip>
I work for a quickly-growing biotech company's manufacturing dept.
One measure of my success in at least the mechanicals of writing &
editing is how few times the document comes back to correct typos,
formatting problems, or unclear sentences or organization.
Many of the problems Rod mentions (SME delays, etc.) are mine too, but
if I can get what *I* do right, I feel better about the other
problems. And I suggest that metrics (in this case just counting the
trend of typos, etc., over a period of time) is a good way to improve
my work.
Doug Montalbano <> Technical Writer <> Chiron Corporation
Doug_Montalbano -at- cc -dot- chiron -dot- com <> (510) 601-2862 (voice/TDD)
How much it all matters, how little it all means.
-- Evelyn Waugh
