Estimation of the number of pages to be written per day?

[Geoff Hart <ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca>]

Abhijit Sinha wondered: <<1. How do you estimate the optimum number of 
pages that a technical writer may write per day with all information 
available using MS Word, RoboHelp, and Framemaker so as to generate 
minimum re-work after review?>>

How? You ask each writer to track their writing productivity for 6 
months to 1 year*, taking care to distinguish between the different 
types of writing they do: record separate times for reference material 
(e.g., reporting the values permitted for a field), explanatory 
material (e.g., explaining the metaphor for an interface or the context 
for a procedure), and procedural material (numbered steps), as well as 
for any other types of writing you expect to produce (e.g., hazard 
warnings, jokes, screenshots). Estimate the mean plus or minus standard 
deviation so you know both how long something typically takes and the 
worst-case scenario (i.e., a productivity equal to the mean minus 1-2 
standard deviations).

* This period is entirely arbitrary, but it does give you a long enough 
period to capture most of the variability you can expect. Since you 
probably don't have 6 months in which to collect this data, start 
collecting it right now: At the end of day 1 of your work, you have a 
crude estimate of your productivity. Use that to predict your schedule. 
Tomorrow, collect more data and add that to day 1's data to create a 
slightly more realistic average. Readjust your schedule based on that 
average. Repeat these steps until you have 6 months of data, or until 
your mean and standard deviation stop changing. A spreadsheet is an 
essential tool for this kind of work.

Next, you carefully estimate the number of items of reference, 
explanatory, and procedural material (plus others) that you're 
responsible for creating: count the number of fields in dialog boxes, 
the number of explanations required, and the number of steps in all the 
procedures (plus any other types of material), and multiply this by 
your average productivity for that type of writing.  Add in a factor to 
account for "unexpected delays": this equals 1-2 standard deviations, 
depending on how unpredictable your work environment will be.

Don't forget to add in time for rewriting material after it has been 
reviewed by subject-matter experts and editors. How long? Follow the 
same approach.

<<2. Can u please let me know if there are any standards, methods, 
links that provides u such standard measurements or estimations to plan 
work for your team?>>

There are no useful standards, because any such standard represents a 
wide range of writing skills, subject matters, and difficulty levels. 
The more your situation differs from the situation used to generate the 
standard, the less relationship the standard bears to the productivity 
you can expect in your situation.

--Geoff Hart   ghart -at- videotron -dot- ca
(try geoffhart -at- mac -dot- com if you don't get a reply)


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

ROBOHELP X5 - SEE THE ALL NEW ROBOHELP X5 IN ACTION!

RoboHelp X5 is a giant leap forward in Help authoring technology, featuring all new Word 2003 support, Content Management, Multi-Author support, PDF and XML support and much more! View an online demo: http://www.macromedia.com/go/techwrldemo

---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Send administrative questions to lisa -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot-  Visit
http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.