Re: Ratio of writers to developers

["Race, Paul" <pdr -at- CCSPO -dot- DAYTONOH -dot- NCR -dot- COM>]

>> Does anyone know of an industry standard for measuring the number of
>> documentation writers needed on a project to the number of developers?

Glen Accardo said:

>Here at SI, there are roughly 25 developers and two tech writers.  We
>barely keep up (multiple products/projects), and the quality of our work
>does suffer (partly from frustration and such, but mostly because we lack
>the time to do good editing/reviewing at the end of projects).  Several
>on the techwr list suggested ratios of 8-1 or 7-1 as ideal, 10-1 as a
>maximum.  Hope this helps.

Depending on what the "developers" are doing, I would rather see a much
lower ratio.  When I was in software development, we typically had a 6:1 or
5:1 ratio.

Part of the problem in a lot of organizations is that the documents are seen
as a necessary evil and not as a value-add to the product.  A lot of
products, though, are really useless without documentation, a problem I have
stressed time and again with various managers.  What's the value in spending
2million to develop something that wouldn't sell because they weren't
allowed to spend over five percent of that on documentation?

>Did the Corinthians ever write back?

Of course they did.  It's very clear from II Cor. that individuals at
Corinth had gotten messages back to Paul about how I Cor. had been received.
 Silly question...