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.
A prospective client (the same one I wrote about some weeks ago) and I
are in the process creating a Statement of Work for the first part of
the project. This first part consists of a User Guide that contains both
end-user and administrator information.
While I have seen the application, I have not seen it yet in actual use.
The client will be coming to my home office to train me for 8 hours and
after that I will begin work. My problem is this: the client has
estimated the time for writing to be 120 hours, and I cannot tell at
this point how many hours will be required.
When I was asked to review the proposed Statement of Work, I told the
client the following in a comment:
These estimates seem reasonable to me, but it is impossible to be sure
without my having a good mental picture of the complexity of the
program. I would tend to go ahead and agree to this if I knew that we
could amend the estimates if I determine within one week or less that
they are not workable. I would probably have a good idea, actually,
immediately after the training.
___________
Was there a better way to handle it? I thought of posting my question
before I made the comment, but that was yesterday and I concluded that
I'd just see what you all would say after the deed was done.
ROBOHELP X5: Featuring Word 2003 support, Content Management, Multi-Author
support, PDF and XML support and much more!
TRY IT TODAY at http://www.macromedia.com/go/techwrl
COMPONENTONE DOC-TO-HELP 7 PROFESSIONAL: From a single set of Word documents, create online Help and printed documentation. New version offers yearly subscription service, Natural Search, Modular TOC Utility, Image Map Editor, Theme Designer, Context String Editor, plus more. http://www.componentone.com/doctohelp .
---
You are currently subscribed to techwr-l as:
archiver -at- techwr-l -dot- com
To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-techwr-l-obscured -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com
Send administrative questions to ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.raycomm.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
