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I spend the first week of a project gathering, from any possible source I can, a list of every conceivable feature I can put my paws on. I'll comb existing specs or notes, speak with developers, buisiness analysts and PMs, and use my common sense and experience to know what topics I might have. For example, if I see there is a topic called X, I might figure I'll eventualy have a "Create X", "Use X", "Delete X".
Then, knowing how I write, which is to standardize on about 1/2 page per heading, I count up the items on my list and come up with the page extimate of two topics per page.
How well does this work? If, for instance I estimated 200 pages, I may end up with 150 to 250 pages. Good system? who knows...it works for me
John Posada
Senior Technical Writer
"Bigamy is having one wife too many. Monogamy is the same."
--Oscar Wilde
----- Original Message ----
From: Tony Markos <ajmarkos -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: John Posada <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com>; techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 4:38:18 PM
Subject: Re: Scoping a DocumentationProject??
John:
By "scoping out" a software documentation project, I
mean determining the "extent of" the project.
(Note: This scoping needs to be done when the TW is
not creating documentation for an already developed
(i.e., scope already firmed) product - like for
requirements specs or test plans.)
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