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Maybe I've spent too much of the past seventeen years putting out fires, but
Dan's two weeks seems a lot more like the real world than Hackos' 8 hours
per page "industry standard" does. Think about it in the context of what
you've produced over the past two or three years (generically speaking to
anyone reading this). Would you still be employed if that 200+ (or 400+) doc
set you wrote had taken 200+ (or 400+) days?
Two weeks to produce a full doc set is absurd. I don't dispute that for a
second. And no matter how brilliant Dan is as a writer, the manual will
suffer for the lack of time allowed for its creation.
I don't know how many times I've been asked to do a big project in a
ridiculously short timeframe - often from the point of learning the product
from the ground up and working in a constant spin-state, turning
chunks/chapters around to SMEs for review while others are in the process of
being written.
- Maybe it works because so many of the projects have been in related
industries, so I already had decent background knowledge and could step
laterally into the next project.
- Maybe I've just worked with exceptional SMEs who were actually willing to
turn drafts around in the equally ridiculous windows I had to give them for
their reviews.
- Maybe I'm just crazy to put in a week of 18-hour days in order to deliver
the manual on time. But that's been par for the course. (And that's not been
much different regardless of my position as a new writer, a pubs manager, or
an independent contractor.)
My motto has evolved into:
Educate the client (boss) to the realities of the job when possible.
Adapt when necessary.
Always deliver the best possible quality product on time.
Lyn
...who would just once like to know what it felt like to have a whole day to
produce a single page of documentation...
-----Original Message-----
From: Susan W. Gallagher
Sent: Wednesday, May 05, 2004 1:39 PM
Dan,
While others have given excellent advice on how to proceed,
you also need justification -- some sort of explanation why
a full-blown user/reference set cannot be produced in the
time alotted. So, here you go...
Managing Your Documentation Projects, JoAnn T. Hackos,
ISBN 0-471-59099-1
In the section entitled "Making a Preliminary Estimate of
Required Resources", Ms. Hackos gives the industry standard
for developing a hardware maintenance and troubleshooting
manual at 8 hours per page. This figure includes project
management, research, writing and editing, etc. (page 170)
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