Compare and Contrast Doc Group Performance -- What's a World-Class Doc Group Look Like?

["John Rosberg" <jrosberg -at- interwoven -dot- com>]

All

 

I've been given a challenge, and would greatly appreciate your advice,
assistance, suggestions, and/or commiseration.

 

During a series of conversations with my boss (a remarkably rational,
non-tech writer VP), he asked a number of questions, all of which boil
down to the following.

 

"What's the measure of a world-class Tech Pubs department?"

 

He went on to say that he felt we were doing a very credible job,
especially in light of the expanding requirements/static resources with
which we live, but impressions don't count for much (especially in an
engineering environment).

 

We work in a software company, as part of the engineering team. Along
with Tech Pub and other things, he is also responsible for the QA
function. He rattled off some QA-type statistics (code coverage, testing
automation, trends in bugs found/fixed) as good examples of how a QA
team in Company X might be compared to a QA team in Company Y.

 

I did not put the dreaded term "metrics" in the subject line - I'm not
looking for way to track our progress against internal goals, nor our
improvement (or otherwise) compared to our past performance. What I
would like to be able to do is compare our performance against that of
another, mythical, world-class software doc team.

 

I'm sure I'm not the first person that's been so tasked, and wiggled out
of tracking keystrokes per minute, typos per furlong, or doc bugs per
release. 

 

So - anyone have any ideas?

 

Thanks a million

 

 

John Rosberg

Director, Document Development & Localization

Interwoven, Inc.

Tel: 312-364-2505

Cell : 312-952-4683

GMT - 6 Hours

jrosberg -at- interwoven -dot- com

 

Visit www.interwoven.com <http://www.interwoven.com/> 

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