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Steve, you bring up some good points -- and some with
which I disagree... I agree that process and product
metrics need to be different and that our work can be
measured (not for certification ;) I liked your comment
about coming in on time and under budget being underrated,
also.
However, I did want to clarify something -- clean copy is
absolutely different than sloppy copy -- I just don't know
that the number of red marks on a page (literally) are a useful
measure. I'm more inclined to use a page/hour number here, too,
to see how long it took the editor to wade through the copy.
(Again, an average, not to measure an individual, per se.)
What I did say, in my email, is that measuring the number
of bugs filed against the docs/help/etc., is a very useful
metric -- no translation needed. My past several companies
all allowed external and internal folks to open bugs directly
against the docs.
>----------
>From: Steven Jong[SMTP:SteveFJong -at- AOL -dot- COM]
>Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 1997 1:08 PM
>To: TECHWR-L -at- LISTSERV -dot- OKSTATE -dot- EDU
>Subject: meeting goals/benchmarking
>
>...
>To comment on Alexia Prendergast's subsequent comment about counting
editorial changes per page, is that really a useless metric?...
>A magazine I saw on software testing had an article
>on metrics, which advocated the metric "rate of change of bugs filed against
>product." I thought that was cool--and it's based on the same idea, once you
>make the translation. Why is that metric useful for measuring code quality
>but useless for measuring documentation quality?....
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