Re: Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

[Steve Rickaby]

At 09:04 -0700 4/10/06, Courtney Collins wrote:

  Is anyone aware of a formula for how many words/pages a Tech Writer can 
 produce in a given period of time? I am being asked to take on additional 
 manuals and upper management wants some numbers to justify additional head 
 count that will be needed. I can probably come up with an estimate based on 
 what we produce today, but I was wondering if some kind of standard already 
 exists.

Courtney: all your responses have been (quite justifiably) 'it depends'. And it 
does: there is no formula. If it's any help, 0.5 to 4 or more hours per 
average manual page depending on content, complexity, audience and quality 
and availability of input data. The latter is key: if you are dependent on 
specific people for data input and they are busy, then all the metrics for 
productivity in the world won't have a lot of bearing on true, elapsed, time 
for content creation.

There are many other issues on estimation - a book could be written. If working 
with a complex product you haven't seen before, you need to allow for your own 
head-banging time to get up to speed with it. Also, the 'other people' factor 
comes heavily into play if the job requires reviewing by subject-matter experts 
(as is usually the case). I once had a set of ten manuals that took the client 
about eighteen months to review, by which time the product in question had 
moved to a new revision.

I can't do better than this other than echo the recommendation to meticulously 
record your own productivity on all jobs for use in later estimation. You can 
then feed this into those phases of a project plan that define your own work, 
while making 'reasonable' estimations for other people's productivity. The 
planning process is usually a matter of scientific 'finger in the air' 
guesstimation. That is, it's fine to make estimates, providing that you clearly 
document those estimates and can justify them. It also help to highlight them, 
for example in a 'Risks' section, which can be especially useful if the dirt 
starts flying later ;-)

An anecdote: perhaps even more difficult than estimating virgin content 
creation is estimating revision, particularly for a large documentation set. I 
was once asked to undertake such a job. Two weeks of heavy, and unpaid, 
spreadsheeting later, I came up with a figure of about $22k in today's money. 
The client's response was 'Yes, we thought it would be about that much'. The 
point being that because I was able to show what in school we were taught to 
call our 'workings out', they were happy to accept the estimate.

Or... you can ignore all the above and Google on 'technical writing planning 
metrics estimation', which got me 3.5 million hits. Here's the top hit, which 
offers a free Excel estimation spreadsheet:

http://www.writingassist.com/articles/plan-documentation-projects.htm

It looks like good sense.

HTH
-- 
Steve
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Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

[Steve Rickaby]

At 09:04 -0700 4/10/06, Courtney Collins wrote:

>  Is anyone aware of a formula for how many words/pages a Tech Writer can 
> produce in a given period of time? I am being asked to take on additional 
> manuals and upper management wants some numbers to justify additional head 
> count that will be needed. I can probably come up with an estimate based on 
> what we produce today, but I was wondering if some kind of standard already 
> exists.

Courtney: all your responses have been (quite justifiably) 'it depends'. And it 
does: there is no formula. If it's any help, 0.5 to 4 or more hours per 
 page depending on content, complexity, audience and quality 
and availability of input data. The latter is key: if you are dependent on 
specific people for data input and they are busy, then all the metrics for 
productivity in the world won't have a lot of bearing on true, elapsed, time 
for content creation.

There are many other issues on estimation - a book could be written. If working 
with a complex product you haven't seen before, you need to allow for your own 
head-banging time to get up to speed with it. Also, the 'other people' factor 
comes heavily into play if the job requires reviewing by subject-matter experts 
(as is usually the case). I once had a set of ten manuals that took the client 
about eighteen months to review, by which time the product in question had 
moved to a new revision.

I can't do better than this other than echo the recommendation to meticulously 
record your own productivity on all jobs for use in later estimation. You can 
then feed this into those phases of a project plan that define your own work, 
while making 'reasonable' estimations for other people's productivity. The 
planning process is usually a matter of scientific 'finger in the air' 
guesstimation. That is, it's fine to make estimates, providing that you clearly 
document those estimates and can justify them. It also help to highlight them, 
for example in a 'Risks' section, which can be especially useful if the dirt 
starts flying later ;-)

An anecdote: perhaps even more difficult than estimating virgin content 
creation is estimating revision, particularly for a large documentation set. I 
was once asked to undertake such a job. Two weeks of heavy, and unpaid, 
spreadsheeting later, I came up with a figure of about $22k in today's money. 
The client's response was 'Yes, we thought it would be about that much'. The 
point being that because I was able to show what in school we were taught to 
call our 'workings out', they were happy to accept the estimate.

Or... you can ignore all the above and Google on 'technical writing planning 
metrics estimation', which got me 3.5 million hits. Here's the top hit, which 
offers a free Excel estimation spreadsheet:



It looks like good sense.

HTH
-- 
Steve

Re: Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

[Merry Foxworth]

Reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon several years ago
about measuring the productivity of tech writers.  

Merry Foxworth

--- Courtney Collins [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:

   Is anyone aware of a formula for how many
 words/pages a Tech Writer can produce in a given
 period of time? I am being asked to take on
 additional manuals and upper management wants some
 numbers to justify additional head count that will
 be needed. I can probably come up with an estimate
 based on what we produce today, but I was wondering
 if some kind of standard already exists.

   Thank you
   Courtney Collins
   Tech Pubs Supervisor
   Patient Monitoring Division
   Datascope Corp.
   201.995.8353
   [EMAIL PROTECTED]
 
   

´¨¨)) -:¦:-
¸.·´ .·´¨¨))
((¸¸.·´ ..·´ -:¦:-

An excerpt from Robert Giddings Musical Quotes and Anecdotes,
published in Longman Pocket Companions:
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes.
John Milton - Il Penseroso (1632).

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RE: Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

[Patterson, Jan]

How many pages can a technical writer produce in x amount of time? It
depends. If you've been with your current employer for a while and
you've already completed several projects (manuals), then you could
gather metrics from what you've already produced to create an average
hours-per-page formula.

jan.
jan e patterson
sr technical writer - environmental systems products - tucson, AZ

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of Courtney Collins
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 9:04 AM
To: Framers List
Subject: Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

  Is anyone aware of a formula for how many words/pages a Tech Writer
can produce in a given period of time? I am being asked to take on
additional manuals and upper management wants some numbers to justify
additional head count that will be needed. I can probably come up with
an estimate based on what we produce today, but I was wondering if some
kind of standard already exists.
   
  Thank you
  Courtney Collins
  Tech Pubs Supervisor
  Patient Monitoring Division
  Datascope Corp.
  201.995.8353
  [EMAIL PROTECTED]


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Re: Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

[John Posada]

--- Courtney Collins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Is anyone aware of a formula for how many words/pages a Tech
 Writer can produce in a given period of time? I am being asked to
 take on additional manuals and upper management wants some numbers
 to justify additional head count that will be needed. I can
 probably come up with an estimate based on what we produce today,
 but I was wondering if some kind of standard already exists.

Courtney...think about it. There are so many factors that determine
how much a writer can write, that I couldn't even begin to figure our
how to quantify it. Off the top of my head:

Level of experience
Quality of the effort
Level of SME support
Writing environment
Subject complexity
Familiarity of the subject
Definition of Produce (first draft? Packaged book?)

Any one of these factors can affect to a factor of 2 or 3 just on
their own.

Besides...would my formula determine how quickly you work? If just
because my formula said you should be producing 20% more...would it
make it so?

John Posada
Senior Technical Writer

I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never 
actually known what the question is.
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Re: Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

[Peter Gold]

Try searching the techwriters' list archives; in the past there have 
been discussions of different approaches to quantifying content production.


Contact information:

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit

http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/listinfo/techwr-l
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

You can reach the person managing the list at
[EMAIL PROTECTED]

Other good sources are Google, and the Society for Technical 
Communication site, stc.org.


HTH

Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices


  Is anyone aware of a formula for how many words/pages a Tech Writer
can produce in a given period of time? I am being asked to take on
additional manuals and upper management wants some numbers to justify
additional head count that will be needed. I can probably come up with
an estimate based on what we produce today, but I was wondering if some
kind of standard already exists.
  

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RE: Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

[Gillian Flato]

One way to determine time is to start keep tracking of your own time.
When you start working on a project, write down the start time in a
spread sheet. When you finished that session, write it down. So for
example, you could have a spread sheet that looks like the following:

Manual 1234

10/5 10:00 - 10:45  2:30-4:30
10/6 11:00-12:00 2:30 - 5:00

Through doing this, you can measure how long something takes you. For
example, by doing this, I determined that it took me 12 hours to do a
Quick Start Guide so obviously, I could only do 4 per week. When the
company wanted me to do 8, I justified the time and they hired an
intern.


Thank you,


Gillian 

-Original Message-
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On
Behalf Of John Posada
Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2006 10:00 AM
To: Courtney Collins; Framers List
Subject: Re: Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

--- Courtney Collins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

 Is anyone aware of a formula for how many words/pages a Tech
 Writer can produce in a given period of time? I am being asked to
 take on additional manuals and upper management wants some numbers
 to justify additional head count that will be needed. I can
 probably come up with an estimate based on what we produce today,
 but I was wondering if some kind of standard already exists.

Courtney...think about it. There are so many factors that determine
how much a writer can write, that I couldn't even begin to figure our
how to quantify it. Off the top of my head:

Level of experience
Quality of the effort
Level of SME support
Writing environment
Subject complexity
Familiarity of the subject
Definition of Produce (first draft? Packaged book?)

Any one of these factors can affect to a factor of 2 or 3 just on
their own.

Besides...would my formula determine how quickly you work? If just
because my formula said you should be producing 20% more...would it
make it so?

John Posada
Senior Technical Writer

I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never
actually known what the question is.
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Re: Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

[Brian Weis]

Is that something along the lines of:

How many words could a tech writer write if a tech writer could write words?

Now my head hurts.

--
B



On 10/5/06, Merry Foxworth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:

Reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon several years ago
about measuring the productivity of tech writers.

Merry Foxworth

--- Courtney Collins [EMAIL PROTECTED]
wrote:

   Is anyone aware of a formula for how many
 words/pages a Tech Writer can produce in a given
 period of time? I am being asked to take on
 additional manuals and upper management wants some
 numbers to justify additional head count that will
 be needed. I can probably come up with an estimate
 based on what we produce today, but I was wondering
 if some kind of standard already exists.

___


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Send list messages to [EMAIL PROTECTED]

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Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

[Merry Foxworth]

Reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon several years ago
about measuring the productivity of tech writers.  

Merry Foxworth

--- Courtney Collins 
wrote:

>   Is anyone aware of a formula for how many
> words/pages a Tech Writer can produce in a given
> period of time? I am being asked to take on
> additional manuals and upper management wants some
> numbers to justify additional head count that will
> be needed. I can probably come up with an estimate
> based on what we produce today, but I was wondering
> if some kind of standard already exists.
>
>   Thank you
>   Courtney Collins
>   Tech Pubs Supervisor
>   Patient Monitoring Division
>   Datascope Corp.
>   201.995.8353
>   courtney_collins at datascope.com
> 
>   

???)) -:?:-
?.?? .))
((??.?? ..?? -:?:-

An excerpt from Robert Giddings "Musical Quotes and Anecdotes",
published in Longman Pocket Companions:
"There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full-voiced choir below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes".
John Milton - Il Penseroso (1632).

__
Do You Yahoo!?
Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around 
http://mail.yahoo.com 

Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

[Patterson, Jan]

How many pages can a technical writer produce in x amount of time? It
depends. If you've been with your current employer for a while and
you've already completed several projects (manuals), then you could
gather metrics from what you've already produced to create an average
hours-per-page formula.

jan.
jan e patterson
sr technical writer - environmental systems products - tucson, AZ

-Original Message-
From: framers-bounces+jan.patterson=esph@lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+jan.patterson=esph.com at lists.frameusers.com] On
Behalf Of Courtney Collins
Sent: Wednesday, October 04, 2006 9:04 AM
To: Framers List
Subject: Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

  Is anyone aware of a formula for how many words/pages a Tech Writer
can produce in a given period of time? I am being asked to take on
additional manuals and upper management wants some numbers to justify
additional head count that will be needed. I can probably come up with
an estimate based on what we produce today, but I was wondering if some
kind of standard already exists.

  Thank you
  Courtney Collins
  Tech Pubs Supervisor
  Patient Monitoring Division
  Datascope Corp.
  201.995.8353
  courtney_collins at datascope.com


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Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

[John Posada]

--- Courtney Collins  wrote:

> Is anyone aware of a formula for how many words/pages a Tech
> Writer can produce in a given period of time? I am being asked to
> take on additional manuals and upper management wants some numbers
> to justify additional head count that will be needed. I can
> probably come up with an estimate based on what we produce today,
> but I was wondering if some kind of standard already exists.

Courtney...think about it. There are so many factors that determine
how much a writer can write, that I couldn't even begin to figure our
how to quantify it. Off the top of my head:

Level of experience
Quality of the effort
Level of SME support
Writing environment
Subject complexity
Familiarity of the subject
Definition of "Produce" (first draft? Packaged book?)

Any one of these factors can affect to a factor of 2 or 3 just on
their own.

Besides...would my formula determine how quickly you work? If just
because my formula said you should be producing 20% more...would it
make it so?

John Posada
Senior Technical Writer

"I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never 
actually known what the question is."

Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

[Peter Gold]

Try searching the techwriters' list archives; in the past there have 
been discussions of different approaches to quantifying content production.

Contact information:

To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit

http://lists.techwr-l.com/mailman/listinfo/techwr-l
or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
techwr-l-request at lists.techwr-l.com

You can reach the person managing the list at
techwr-l-owner at lists.techwr-l.com

Other good sources are Google, and the Society for Technical 
Communication site, stc.org.

HTH

Regards,

Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

>   Is anyone aware of a formula for how many words/pages a Tech Writer
> can produce in a given period of time? I am being asked to take on
> additional manuals and upper management wants some numbers to justify
> additional head count that will be needed. I can probably come up with
> an estimate based on what we produce today, but I was wondering if some
> kind of standard already exists.
>   

Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

[Gillian Flato]

One way to determine time is to start keep tracking of your own time.
When you start working on a project, write down the start time in a
spread sheet. When you finished that session, write it down. So for
example, you could have a spread sheet that looks like the following:

Manual 1234

10/5 10:00 - 10:45  2:30-4:30
10/6 11:00-12:00 2:30 - 5:00

Through doing this, you can measure how long something takes you. For
example, by doing this, I determined that it took me 12 hours to do a
Quick Start Guide so obviously, I could only do 4 per week. When the
company wanted me to do 8, I justified the time and they hired an
intern.


Thank you,


Gillian 

-Original Message-
From: framers-bounces+gflato=nanometrics@lists.frameusers.com
[mailto:framers-bounces+gflato=nanometrics.com at lists.frameusers.com] On
Behalf Of John Posada
Sent: Thursday, October 05, 2006 10:00 AM
To: Courtney Collins; Framers List
Subject: Re: Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

--- Courtney Collins  wrote:

> Is anyone aware of a formula for how many words/pages a Tech
> Writer can produce in a given period of time? I am being asked to
> take on additional manuals and upper management wants some numbers
> to justify additional head count that will be needed. I can
> probably come up with an estimate based on what we produce today,
> but I was wondering if some kind of standard already exists.

Courtney...think about it. There are so many factors that determine
how much a writer can write, that I couldn't even begin to figure our
how to quantify it. Off the top of my head:

Level of experience
Quality of the effort
Level of SME support
Writing environment
Subject complexity
Familiarity of the subject
Definition of "Produce" (first draft? Packaged book?)

Any one of these factors can affect to a factor of 2 or 3 just on
their own.

Besides...would my formula determine how quickly you work? If just
because my formula said you should be producing 20% more...would it
make it so?

John Posada
Senior Technical Writer

"I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you've never
actually known what the question is."
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This message (including any attachments) may contain confidential information 
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recipient, delete this message. If you are not the intended recipient, 
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Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

[Brian Weis]

Is that something along the lines of:

How many words could a tech writer write if a tech writer could write words?

Now my head hurts.

--
B



On 10/5/06, Merry Foxworth  wrote:
> Reminds me of a Dilbert cartoon several years ago
> about measuring the productivity of tech writers.
>
> Merry Foxworth
>
> --- Courtney Collins 
> wrote:
>
> >   Is anyone aware of a formula for how many
> > words/pages a Tech Writer can produce in a given
> > period of time? I am being asked to take on
> > additional manuals and upper management wants some
> > numbers to justify additional head count that will
> > be needed. I can probably come up with an estimate
> > based on what we produce today, but I was wondering
> > if some kind of standard already exists.

Formula for Tech Writing Lead Time?

[Courtney Collins]

  Is anyone aware of a formula for how many words/pages a Tech Writer can 
produce in a given period of time? I am being asked to take on additional 
manuals and upper management wants some numbers to justify additional head 
count that will be needed. I can probably come up with an estimate based on 
what we produce today, but I was wondering if some kind of standard already 
exists.

  Thank you
  Courtney Collins
  Tech Pubs Supervisor
  Patient Monitoring Division
  Datascope Corp.
  201.995.8353
  courtney_collins at datascope.com


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