Metrics -- The Measurements that are the Substance of Documentation

When it comes to documentation, where do the numbers come from?

It used to be relatively easy:

Typewriters had monotype fonts (such as what you see as the computer font called Courier), and manuscript standards required 1-inch margins and double-line-spacing between the lines of text on 8-1/2" X 11" pages of paper (in the U.S.A. -- in other countries, perhaps it was "A4" paper).

In any case, this would result in the average page containing about 250 words. So, four typewritten pages contain about 1000 words. (These are considered "manuscript" pages and NOT "finished" or "published" pages.) What is captured here is the CONTENT of the document.

Then, you have the times involved with creating a document. Again, there are many ways to come up with these figures.

A researcher in technical documentation stated in her seminars that a standard printed (finished) document project in Silicon Valley (or most likely anywhere else) would require 8 hours per page. Using this figure, one could calculate that a 100-page finished document would require 800 hours of work. If you consider that with 8 hours a day (a page a day), that would be 100 days, or 20 weeks, or 5 months of work. From start to finish.

Before you think this is excessive, consider this: Included in this figure are the times for scoping the project, planning the project, budgeting the project, researching the content source material, consulting with subject matter experts on the target content, writing the rough draft, creating the illustrations, reviewing the preliminary document draft, editing, preparation of the final document, and printing and/or coding for web viewing.

So, when you think you have an extremely slow writer who can do only one page per day, that's not the right way of looking at the picture. The first few weeks of a documentation project might not show ANY writing being done. This time would be spent with the scoping, planning, budgeting, and researching the content source material (if any). Pages of a document are not usually worked on during this time--but that does not mean that the time spent doing the mentioned work isn't critical for a successful project. This preliminary work is critical.

Once this preliminary work is completed, a good tech writer may be able to churn out 4 to 8 pages per day (because the previous work compiled enough notes from the source material to give substantial material for the base content). If a separate illustrator can be employed to help out, the artwork can be done simultaneously--thus compressing the time a bit for producing the document. If a separate editor and layout specialist can be employed, the document end time can also be further compressed. Unfortunately, many times the writer is responsible for everything--doing the research, doing the writing, doing the layout, doing the illustrations, conducting the reviews with the subject matter experts (SMEs), and sometimes even converting the document to final (without other-person editing and review). Sometimes the writer even has to contract and negotiate the printing production of a document.

So, if the documentation project is a one-person job, the longest time period may be a good estimate (100-page document = 800 hours). If the writer is an inexperienced writer, the job will take longer. If the writer is experienced not only with the tools of the trade, but also with the content material and the type of document, the time for completion can be compressed.

What's your writing time? Pull out a stopwatch or digital timer--then start keyboarding about something you are familiar with. Stop after perhaps 4 to 10 pages of 12-pt monospace font, double-line-spaced, 8-1/2" X 11" pages. (If you are using MS-Word, you can select the Word Count/Statistics tool from your main toolbar to get the number of words you have produced and the amount of time you have taken to do so.) If you do this a few times for various topics, you can start to create a set of sessions from which you can calculate your average time per page. This is a good figure for starters.

What's your editing time? Again, pull out a stopwatch or digital timer--then start reading through some document manuscript pages (12-pt monospace font, double-line-spaced, 8-1/2" X 11" pages) that you perceive as not-too-easy and not-too-complicated. Try for about 5 to 10 pages. Then, once you've hit that number of pages, see how long it took you to go through those pages. Now, you have your average time per page. With MS-Word manuscript pages, you can easily do a word-count of those pages and come up with an average time for a certain number of words (for example, 1000 words), to provide the figure for wordcounts when the pages don't match the standards for the metrics (for example, when you get a document in 8pt, kerned font such as Times-Roman or Palatino, and on smaller or larger pages).

I'm keeping it simple here. Because many additional factors have an effect on documentation project times. Factors such as the complexity of the content, the target audience, the availability of your subject matter experts, the availability of your source/research materials, the number of staff assigned to produce the document, the type of document required, the number of illustrations required, and so on.

But this should at least give you an idea about the metrics involved with a documentation project. These metrics are critical for further planning and scheduling (and budgeting) in a documentation project.