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July 26, 2011 9:09 AM Subscribe
Can you recommend some free tools that can help generate timeline estimates?
Wise askmefi, can you please rec some great free tools that can help a small documentation team generate timeline estimates? Perhaps something that can allow a writer to select the document [type], [product], [complexity], and even [speed/experience], where every variable has an associated number of hours (or in the case of speed/experience, a factor).
Example:
Writer A will write a [KB article] for [widget A] which is [very complex]; writer is [newbie].
Writer B will write a [white paper] for [widget B] which is [moderately complex]; writer is [experienced].
Or, if you have done something like this from the ground up, what tools did you use? Note: we are a small-ish company with limited resources. Anything you can suggest would be appreciated, thanks!
Wise askmefi, can you please rec some great free tools that can help a small documentation team generate timeline estimates? Perhaps something that can allow a writer to select the document [type], [product], [complexity], and even [speed/experience], where every variable has an associated number of hours (or in the case of speed/experience, a factor).
Example:
Writer A will write a [KB article] for [widget A] which is [very complex]; writer is [newbie].
Writer B will write a [white paper] for [widget B] which is [moderately complex]; writer is [experienced].
Or, if you have done something like this from the ground up, what tools did you use? Note: we are a small-ish company with limited resources. Anything you can suggest would be appreciated, thanks!
Response by poster: Thanks, jon1270. I was thinking Excel already, though the problem with that is the accessibility. We currently keep files that we use for collaboration on a network drive, which works, but I prefer something hosted and easily edited, e.g., we can embed .xls files in our wiki, but we can't edit them right on the wiki page. However, if there aren't other solutions, I'll probably go this route. (Need to brush up on my Excel skills.)
As for the subjective factors--we would base our numbers on historic metrics (and when we need to, we can revisit them). The idea is to have consistent estimates for everyone's projects. Little variations shouldn't matter as long as the total numbers are within estimated ranges.
posted by methroach at 11:03 AM on July 26, 2011
As for the subjective factors--we would base our numbers on historic metrics (and when we need to, we can revisit them). The idea is to have consistent estimates for everyone's projects. Little variations shouldn't matter as long as the total numbers are within estimated ranges.
posted by methroach at 11:03 AM on July 26, 2011
Perhaps a Google docs spreadsheet?
posted by jon1270 at 11:18 AM on July 26, 2011 [1 favorite]
posted by jon1270 at 11:18 AM on July 26, 2011 [1 favorite]
If you aren't averse to text editing, I recommend TaskJuggler. It's very geeky and definitely not for everyone, but there are few scheduling problems that it can't handle.
posted by vanar sena at 1:36 PM on July 26, 2011
posted by vanar sena at 1:36 PM on July 26, 2011
Response by poster: Looks like I'm going to stick with Excel for now.
Thanks for the other ideas!
posted by methroach at 7:12 AM on July 28, 2011
Thanks for the other ideas!
posted by methroach at 7:12 AM on July 28, 2011
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posted by jon1270 at 9:17 AM on July 26, 2011 [1 favorite]