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Although, by this stage, you don’t really know enough about
product or your audience requirements to know how long documentation will take to complete, management will nonetheless like a rough estimate. This is OK, as long as everyone is aware that it is a VERY rough estimate, and subject to change pending further knowledge and research.
This initial estimate must incorporate all of time you’ll spend on stages that occur before and after writing stage. Remember, these stages are important, and should not be short-changed. (TIP: In a well managed project, planning should take approx 30% of your time, writing 50%, production 19%, and evaluation 1%.)
Estimating pre-writing stages
Allowing for pre-writing stages is trickier than allowing for writing. If you’re having trouble, estimate writing stage, then base all other estimates on that, using above figures as a guide.
Estimating writing and post-writing stages
Because you probably still don’t know a great deal about product or users, your estimate here will be based primarily on a combination of past records, experience, intuition (gut feel), and industry standards in combination with goals and tasks you’ve already specified. Start with following steps.
1.Estimate quantity of work required to document tasks user will need to perform to achieve their goals. 2.Track down any previous doco records. See if you can cross reference time taken to produce similar doco in past with current quantity estimate. Derive a figure based on this method. 3.See how this compares with estimate derived from industry standard figures (e.g., I think current industry standard is to allow 1 day per page of documentation – this covers all drafts and reviews). 4.Compare two figures and determine a good compromise based on your experience and intuition. 5.Figure out how long you actually have to do it, then how many writers you’ll need to get it done during this time. 6.Draw up a project schedule using something like Microsoft Project. Don’t forget to allow time for recruiting, training, and writing work practices.
TIP: At this stage, you should write first draft of Documentation Project Plan. It should include or refer to all of steps outlined in this document. Basically, it should reflect process advocated here, but be specific to project you’re working on. It should also include a timeline.
Research Audience Requirements
Research on users of product and audience of documentation is one of most important parts of any successful product. Unfortunately, it is also one of most often overlooked aspects of any project. This generally occurs because decision makers feel they already know pretty much everything there is to know about users and audience.
When managing a documentation project, you should investigate chance of conducting research. If you’re employed late in product life cycle, you should ask if user research has already been conducted for product itself. If it hasn’t, there’s a good chance you won’t get support for audience research. Audience research should seek to identify:
•user goals (what user hopes to achieve with product) •user expectations of doco (Manuals? Online help? Tutorials?, usability requirements, localisation requirements, etc.) •user mental models (how they already see online help, what impressions they have of it, etc.) •user tasks (how user uses product to achieve their goals) •which users perform what tasks (user/task matrix) •how long have users been doing these tasks? •which tasks are one-off and which are repeated? •did they ever do them differently? •do they do a variety of tasks, or just a few? •do they hate doing it? (is it tedious, repetitive?) •do they find it difficult? •which tasks are considered essential? •are they normally under pressure when they do task? •are there other distractions (environmental, social, etc.)?
Some research methods to consider are:
•Observation of users doing their work in their work environment •Focus groups and interviews with users •Questionnaires
TIP: For further details on these methods, take a look at Managing Your Documentation Projects by Hackos (1994), User and Task Analysis for Interface Design by Hackos & Redish (1998), Social Marketing: New Imperative for Public Health by Manoff (1985), Designing Qualitative Research 2nd Edition by Marshall & Rossman (1995), and “Conducting Focus Groups – A Guide for First-Time Users”, in Marketing Intelligence and Planning by Tynan & Drayton (1988).
To be continued… See part 2 of this article - http://www.divinewrite.com/docoprocess2.htm - for information on preparing your specifications.
* Glenn Murray is an advertising copywriter and heads copywriting studio Divine Write. He can be contacted on Sydney +612 4334 6222 or at glenn@divinewrite.com. Visit http://www.divinewrite.com for further details or more FREE articles.
