TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Just curious if any of you know of any formal studies that have been done on
task breakdowns in professional writing activities.
I was reminded of this by an email message that I sent off to someone the other
day. About three years ago, I did an informal study of some of the medium-sized
writing projects going on in my company. We already had a time tracking system
in place that measured hours spent on individual projects. For the study, we
devised a set of extensions to the project codes that further subdivided time
into 3 categories:
- actual content-producing work -- writing, editing, creating examples,
capturing screen shots, indexing, etc.
- work that prepared the writer do be able to create content -- meetings w/
product team members, time spent learning the product, etc.
- production-oriented work -- formatting, reformatting material from other
sources, printing out review drafts, etc.
The allocation by the end of the project was 20% of the hours were spent
creating content, 20% was spend on prep, and the remaining 60% on production
tasks.
I've since talked to other technical writers who agreed with that breakdown.
But I don't know if any formal studies on this have ever been done. If anyone
else knows of any, I'd be interested in hearing about it.
Best regards,
/chet
Chet Ensign
Logical Design Solutions
465 South Street http://www.lds.com
Morristown, NJ 07960 censign -at- lds -dot- com [email]
201-971-0100 [Phone] 201-971-0103 [FAX]
TECHWR-L List Information
To send a message about technical communication to 2500+ list readers,
E-mail to TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU -dot- Send administrative commands
ALL other questions or problems concerning the list
should go to the listowner, Eric Ray, at ejray -at- ionet -dot- net -dot-