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Subject:Estimating (again) From:Win Day <winday -at- CML -dot- COM> Date:Thu, 16 Feb 1995 14:24:19 -0500
To: techwr-l -at- vm1 -dot- ucc -dot- okstate -dot- edu
John Anderson wrote:
JJ> In general, how do you estimate how long a technical writing project
JJ> (fx. writing a manual) is going to take?
JJ> Are there any industry-standard ways of measuring/estimating this?
JJ> Or any half-decent rules of thumb?
If you followed the thread a couple of weeks ago, I asked the same
question (sort of). I asked whether 5 hours per page seemed reasonable
as it seemed high to me. The responses I received ranged from 3 pages
per day to 10 hours per page!
Check out JoAnn Hackos' book, "Managing Your Documentation Projects"
(John Wiley & Sons, 1994). There's a lot of solid information about
estimating, tracking, etc. - all the stuff I used to do in engineering
but didn't know how to translate to technical writing.
Not only did I use her estimating procedures, I specified the manual's
contents to such a level of detail that it was relatively easy for me to
revise the project scope at my client's request. I HIGHLY recommend the
book.
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