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.
Re: Estimation of the number of pages to be written per day
Subject:Re: Estimation of the number of pages to be written per day From:"Gene Kim-Eng" <techwr -at- genek -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Tue, 28 Dec 2004 08:57:19 -0800
I rather doubt that the saying is the reason for the high page counts.
It's most likely the result of someone using "pages produced" as a
measure of writer productivity, either formally or informally. In my
own experience, I took over a publications group that was chronically
completing documents behind schedule, and when I asked the writers
to submit their self-written objectives, many of them actually wrote
things like "write 200-page user guide for..." I rewrote everybody's
objectives to specify the completion of documentation in synch with
product releases as the criteria for their performance reviews, and
when some of them said there was no way to complete a "200-page
user guide" in the times specified, I replied, "So who said the user
guides have to be 200 pages long?" Within the first year, page counts
fell by an average of 30%, and you can bet your next paycheck that
the product managers made sure all their most critical topics were
still covered.
> I'm not kidding in that request. How do you know that many or most
> managers and thus tech writers strive for high page counts based on an
> old TW saying?
ROBOHELP X5 - SEE THE ALL NEW ROBOHELP X5 IN ACTION!
RoboHelp X5 is a giant leap forward in Help authoring technology, featuring all new Word 2003 support, Content Management, Multi-Author support, PDF and XML support and much more! View an online demo: http://www.macromedia.com/go/techwrldemo
---
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- techwr-l -dot- com
Send administrative questions to lisa -at- techwr-l -dot- com -dot- Visit http://www.techwr-l.com/techwhirl/ for more resources and info.
