Re: Rule of thumb for doc time based on development time?

Subject: Re: Rule of thumb for doc time based on development time?
From: John Posada <jposada01 -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: Faith Weber - ESC <faithw -at- esystem -dot- com>, techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Date: Fri, 9 Dec 2005 10:17:17 -0800 (PST)

> Have you ever worked with any rules of thumb for estimating
> documentation time for a project based on the estimated
> development time? If so, what were they? How well did they
> work for you?

No, and I wouldn't even attempt to try. In fact, it's probably an
inverse number. By that, I mean that if development spends ALOT of
time on creating a truly inteligent feature with lots of analysis, it
will probably take a short period of time to document it. OTOH, if
they just slap it together, it is going to take MUCH longer to
document it because you have to deal with something that is not
intuitive and needs lots of qualifications.

There's too many variables. Imagine a feature that requires accessing
many databases with many joins, and includes a number of complex .net
assemblies in the background, just so you can select a dropdown list,
pick a value, and press a submit button.

OTOH, a different functionality may require one DB, one SP, one .dll,
and you still have a dropdown list. One took a team of 10 developers
30 days and one took one developer a week.

How do you quantify this?

John Posada
Senior Technical Writer

"Well, you have to know these things
when you're king, you know." -
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