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>> Our managers are not writers and they insist on
>> measuring our productivity in number of pages.
Just like measuring a programer's productivity by the number of lines of code
they can pump out. At my last job, the company developed an automated
program-generating program that would produce 600 lines of code for a simple
task (eg, one that a halfway knowledgable programmer could do with 25 lines of
code or less) and 1000s of lines for any half-way useful application. We wrote
up a tongue-in-cheek ad for it that positioned it a quick way for programmers
to improve their "productivity."
At that same company, we did some productivity studies with a few of our
writers. We had developed a project tracking system that distinguished broad
categories of work within specific project. For the studies, we further refined
those categories so that we could distinguish writing new material from editing
existing material from meeting with technical contacts from creating and
testing examples from reformatting the stuff tech contacts sent from dropping
everything in order to satisfy a request for review draft, etc. etc. ... We
found that for typical projects writers were spending from 20% to 40% of their
time on real creative, value adding work, with the rest of it tied up in grunt
work, politics, etc. It was eye-opening for us, so much so that nobody outside
of our group would believe it.
I'd pose this question: "why does management want to measure productivity?"
What is it that they want to know. Product development (writing, programming,
interface design, package design, and other activities of such ilk) is
different from, say, the number of phone calls a telemarketer makes in a given
hour stretch. Counting the number of pages sounds like trying to force an
activity to fit the wrong measure. Do your managers measure their productivity
by the number of memos they write?
Our measure of productivity was more along the lines of "did the client get the
material they requested in the time-frame they requested?" And "did our
production and delivery of the material fit within the general turnaround
parameters we see for similar projects?" Now, that may well not be a suitable
or adequate measure for your company's management.
Nevertheless, I still go back to the question: "What does management want to
know?" I believe that the "productivity" of product development groups can be
measured meaningfully, but only when you first answer this fundamental
question. Knowing what information about your activities management wants is
the prerequisite to developing a yardstick for measuring it.
Best regards,
/chet
Chet Ensign
Director of Electronic Documentation
Logical Design Solutions
571 Central Avenue http://www.lds.com
Murray Hill, NJ 07974 censign -at- lds -dot- com [email]
908-771-9221 [Phone] 908-771-0430 [FAX]
