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Subject:Re: New TECHWR-L Poll Question - Ratios From:TechComm Dood <techcommdood -at- gmail -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Sun, 16 Jan 2005 22:41:06 -0500
> What is the ratio of writers to developers where you work?
> * Other/None of the above
To be honest, I have no idea. We have departments for Development and
Documentation, but not all Development people are always developers,
and not all Documentation people are always writers. In fact, on the
last major project I worked on, I was functioning as a developer more
than a technical writer.
I've never bothered to worry about the ratio, either. It means nothing
to me. If the work's getting done, then I guess I have the right # of
people on the task, and that's all that really matters.
Also, the ratio really doesn't provide any useful data, as it's not
ratio of writers to developers (and what about ratio of testers to
developers and writers to testers?) in a project setting, rather in an
organization setting. I can do a head count, but it means very little
in the grand scheme of things since project team member counts can
fluctuate from project to project.
One ratio I do bother to track is # of active projects per writer. Big
or small, too many projects results in confusion and lower quality
deliverables in the end.
Funny, the only ratio I ever made a stink over was the male to female
ratio at RPI, which was about 7:1 for my freshman class and about 9:1
on average. ;-)
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