The Black Art of Estimation

[Ben Kovitz <apteryx -at- CHISP -dot- NET>]

Does anyone have or know where I can find some tips on estimating the size
of a manual and how long it will take to produce?

It's one thing to be able to write the manuals, quite another to be able to
estimate the amount of effort in advance.  I've successfully dodged the
estimation task many times, but a project is coming up where I can't get
out of it.  Fortunately, it's for software that is "90% done" (i.e. 50%).
So I can probably play with the software for a while and even grill an SME
before making the estimate.  However, I was told, "Don't go into details.
This is strictly scope-of-work at this stage."  (Scope-of-work = figuring
out the number of billable hours.)  But how do you schedule before you know
the details?

It's such a strange request: Here's something that will take a lot of
research just to find out what it is, a lot of thought to choose the
manual's content and organization based on that research, more research
after that, and finally some writing--and you're supposed to tell how long
it's going to take before doing any of that research.  I try to educate
people that research is by far the largest task in writing a manual, but
they still (quite reasonably) want an estimate of the size of the job
before I've done that research.

Any ideas?  War stories?  Success stories?

--
Ben Kovitz <apteryx -at- chisp -dot- net>
Boulder, Colorado

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