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Subject:Estimating length of content From:"Loraine Nazareth" <nloraine -at- toronto -dot- ds -dot- adp -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 3 Aug 2001 12:56:03 -0400
I'm writing my first Doc Plan, and while I have all the info I need on
estimating time, I'm wondering, how accurate should I be in estimating the
length of the content? For example, if I am documenting a requirement that
will fill a quarter of a page
(or even less), do I estimate the time it will take me to write a quarter of
a page of content, or simply estimate on a whole page. I'd like to be as
accurate as possible, but this involves timely calculations (first figuring
out how long it would take to write a page based on the type of
writing, -initial writing vs. updating, for instance- then dividing that
time by the amount of page the content spans, and then converting that
number into an understandable format, such as 0:15 or 0.25 hr). On the other
hand, the figures I come up with when estimating on an entire page seem
highly inflated considering the small portions of content. Such small
portions of content may not be characteristic of most manuals, but seem to
be typical of the client bulletins which accompany all our products (they
sum up all new features).
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