RE: ratio of tech writers to developers at your company?

[John Posada <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

> Why would the ratio be meaningless? I am gathering the data on

Where to begin....

Because you don't see what the figures are based on. You want to make
the correlation without observing what each of us is doing.

For the last monthy, I've been documenting using a portal. I can pump
out 20 pages a day....lots of graphics, step by step, click this,
click that...I also know that one of the modules I documented was for
portal security and has been worked on by a team of four developers
for the last 6 months. 

Three months ago, I documented a database. It took  a DBA a few days
to create the database and took me over a month to document it.

It's impossible for you to get any meaningful data from what others
do that has nothing to do with your circumstances.

Even comparing industry apples to apples. It may take someone who has
15 years of experience a day to document what takes a developer a
month to develop and someone else, who has been writing for less than
a year to take a week to document the same thing.

> behalf of a colleague who wants to present it to a 
> manager in hopes of increasing the pool of writers. 

How can someone justify what they are supposed to do because others
do it. Assuming that management is satisfied that your people are
aren't underperforming and are satified with each individual's
productivity, how about looking at what you are doing with X people,
then figure if you want it done in half the time, or if you want to
do twice as much, you need to double the people.


John Posada
Senior Technical Writer

"So long and thanks for all the fish."
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

WebWorks ePublisher Pro for Word features support for every major Help
format plus PDF, HTML and more. Flexible, precise, and efficient content 
delivery. Try it today!. http://www.webworks.com/techwr-l 

Doc-To-Help includes a one-click RoboHelp project converter. It's that easy.  Watch the demo at http://www.componentone.com/TECHWRL/DocToHelp2005

---
You are currently subscribed to TECHWR-L as archive -at- infoinfocus -dot- com -dot- 

To unsubscribe send a blank email to 
techwr-l-unsubscribe -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
or visit http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/options/techwr-l/archive%40infoinfocus.com

To subscribe, send a blank email to techwr-l-join -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.