TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
I don't know of anythng published on this topic. About 3 years ago, we did
a telephone survey of about 25 tech pubs organizations in
software-development companies. These ranged from the most well known to
fairly obscure. We found that the ratio of technical writers to
development engineers ranged from one tech writer per 25 engineers, to one
tech writer per engineer.
Organizations that produced excellent techical documentation (in our
opinion) tended to have about one writer for every three engineers.
Organizations that produced mediocre documentation typically had about one
writer per every 7-10 engineers.
Our user surveys told us that our documentation was better than that of
our competition but of average quality. At that time we had about one
writer per every five engineers.
My own experience show me that the way tech writers work with the
developers is at least as important as these ratios. Writers who work as
full members of the development team produce the best quality in the least
time. No matter what the ratio, writers that work with source info that is
"thrown over the wall" produce poor quality.
I have since retired, so I no longer have access to the documented results
of our survey.
--
John P. Brinegar, http://www.netzone.com/~jbrinega/
Consulting and development
-Performance support systems
-Technical communications
