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Subject:Re: Documentation Department Metrics From:"Brian F. Gregg, N04-3A, ext. 2724" <bgregg -at- FOXBORO -dot- COM> Date:Wed, 26 Oct 1994 14:32:46 LCL
Paul MacGyver Carman writes:
>I have just been promoted to a position in my company's
>documentation department that involves reporting metrics and
>budgets for the department.
>Does anyone have any suggestions on how to track the progress
>of a doc. department other than the "how many pages did you put out"
>method?
>I often spend a large amount of time editing documents, and as
>a result, the page count either stays the same or goes down.
We are attempting to improve the process in our tech writing organization,
particularly the interface of engineering detail with customer
documentation. We have looked at various metrics and have determined that
the number of pages per something or other is not a good indicator.
Some of the thing we have opted to measure include:
Cost of Quality
Cost per Page
First Pass Yield
Weekly Backlog
Days in Process
Customer Satisfaction
Most of these indicators are easy to determine based on some basic
measurements. We have put the hooks into our process to record start date,
completion date, total labor, total operating budget, # of reworked
documents, etc.