Re: Estimating time

[Bruce Byfield <bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com>]

"Beilby, Margaret" wrote:

> The industry average is 5 hours/page (1.6 pages/day) for printed
> documentation (Hackos: Managing Your Documentation Projects) and 4
> hours/topic (2 topics/day) for online documentation (Hackos: : Managing Your
> Documentation Projects and Deaton & Zubak: Designing Windows 95 Help: A
> Guide to Creating Online Documentation).

The only trouble is, these figures are so heavily dependent on the writer, the
type of writing, and the circumstances that they are virtually meaningless. And
I can't help but suspect that anyone who wrote at these rates regularly would
soon be unemployed. They may be ideal, but most documentation is rarely written
under ideal circumstances.

For my own purposes, I tend to calculate time according to three main audiences:
end-users, tech-support, and programmers; on the whole, I need the least time
when writing for end-users because I need less information to meet their needs.
When I work with other writers, I try to schedule according to my knowledge or
best guess of the other writers' individual speeds.

--
Bruce Byfield bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com 604.421.7177





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