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.
Subject:Re: Hours of Labor per work day. From:Jean Weber <jhweber -at- WHITSUNDAY -dot- NET -dot- AU> Date:Thu, 29 Apr 1999 11:42:33 +1000
In my experience, seven hours is WAY too high, assuming an 8-hour work day.
I've generally used a 6-hours-per-day metric when planning projects. A
lower metric (say, 5.5) might apply if you have some inexperienced people
on the team, or your workplace tends to have a lot of meetings, or people
are expected to spend some time on self-education, testing new software
solutions, mentoring others, scoping new work, writing proposals for new
business, and so on -- some of which may be directly related to the project
and some of which may not. There's often a lot of time spent on non-project
work that is nevertheless necessary for the running of a department or a
business.
I'm sure JoAnn Hackos has something about this in her book, _Managing Your
Documentation Projects_, probably in the chapter on creating a project plan.
And drawing in another thread, please note that the 6 hours per day of
productive project work usually does not equate to 6 billable hours.
Whether you are staff or a contractor, if you're working 8 hours a day for
the company, you'll need to be paid for the full 8 hours. How that payment
is treated in the company's accounting (cost recovery) system varies: all
of your time might be charged against the project, or some of the time
might be charged to a different cost code (some overhead code, for example).
At 08:47 AM 4/28/99 -0500, Michael Egan wrote:
> At the company where I work, the planning project officer could calculate
>the number of hours a project would take. The director wanted to find out
>the number of workdays required.
>
> The obvious solution would be to divide by 8. But is that realistic? Are
>there any studies that suggest otherwise. Or even an industry standard?
>
> The planning officer added up typical meetings, required readings, etc.
>and came up with 6.5 to 7 hours of work per day.
>
> Comments?
>
> Michael P. Egan
> Senior Consultant
> DACG
