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Subject:Re: Average Hours Worked ( long ) From:SteveFJong -at- aol -dot- com To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 31 Jul 2002 14:51:14 EDT
Dick Margulis <margulis -at- fiam -dot- net> commented on a workplace where documents
were broken down into standard "work units": "[s]ounds highly dysfunctional
to me, as I suspect it does to you. My point, I reiterate, was not that
people _don't_ treat tech writing like factory work but that they
_shouldn't._"
I think writing _can_ be treated as factory work; moreover, the bigger the
writing group, the more you _should_ treat it that way. (No, I'm not just
taking a contrary position for argument's sake; I really believe it 8^)
Now that you've wiped the coffee from your screen--and I hope you didn't burn
yourself--let me pose a hypothetical question. Let's say you own a tech
writing shop, and you've been invited to bid on a documentation project. You
need to state how long you think it will take you to complete the project,
and how many writers you'll need to do it. In other words, you need to answer
the same question the creators of those "work units" attempt to deal with.
My question is simple: how do you go about estimating the work? Please note
that I'm talking about products of equal quality; I'm fine with the answer
"it takes longer to document the product to a high level of quality," but I
want to know how you go about estimating "longer."
(Of course, people who lead writing groups in companies never have to answer
such questions, nuh-uh 8^|
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