Productivity of less than 20 words an hour is common – that’s less than approx. 15 lines of text per day.
Productivity levels like this don’t mean your writers aren’t working, but they do mean something is wrong with your process.
Typically, the major problem is rework - repetitive changes being made to “finished” documentation due to changes in the underlying project. Rework is frustrating for everyone - to the company it's a waste of money, and to the writer it's irritating and demotivational. Rework typically stems in turn from starting a process - in this case the documentation effort - too early.
Rework problems are usually made worse by a lack of methodology - you’d never accept the ad hoc way most documentation teams work in your engineering or system development teams.
We can help you get started by analyzing your documentation productivity. And once you've documented your productivity level, you'll almost certainly have a justified case for making process improvements!
Thereafter we can apply our know-how in both documentation and LEAN to analyze your processes, define metrics, recommend process improvements and methodologies, and define a long-term strategy for your documentation function.
We can also introduce you to a tried and successful method that not only improves documentation productivity without reducing quality, but also improves working conditions for your team.
Too good to be true? Read here for a taste of how it's done!