Estimating Technical Writing Projects

Subject: Estimating Technical Writing Projects
From: Tony Markos <ajmarkos -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Wed, 18 Aug 2004 13:35:06 -0700 (PDT)


To all:

Any suggestions on how to estimate time in TW
projects? In talking with the locals (here in
beautiful Cleveland Ohio), the only advice I get is to
first estimate page count (via various techniques).

But really, that is a very poor method. In a recent
TW assignment, it took me almost a month to write four
or five paragraphs (3-4 sentences each). Now those few
paragraphs where hugely important to the success of a
very large-scale federal gov software project (they
where the scope statement of the project), and, in
order to write those few paragraphs, I had to create a
large data flow diagram to organize my thoughts
(creating the DFD is actually where most of my time
was spent), but this assignment clearly demonstrates
the folly of basing TW time estimates upon page count.

Any thoughts?

Tony Markos
ajmarkos -at- yahoo -dot- com




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