Managing Product Development

True confessions: I was hoping to finish the draft (of Successful Project Management) for technical review today. I didn’t. I knew on Tuesday and called Daniel to let him know where I was.

This past week I focused on finishing chapters. I have about 16 chapters and one appendix. I don’t know if the book will keep its current architecture; I removed one chapter yesterday. I have three chapters to finish (somewhere between 10,000-15,000 words) and three to rewrite (changing about 15,000 words? and a bunch of pictures). When I’m cranking, I can write close to 5000 words a day. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, I’m writing in markup language, so I don’t know how many of those words are markup and how many are content words. (This is similar to the problem of comments vs code when you count lines of code :-)

I’ve noticed these patterns in my writing over the last couple of months:

• When I know something cold, I use a form of mental shorthand. I write using that shorthand, losing my readers. I need reviewers to let me know I’ve lost them.
• When Daniel reviews my writing, he helps me refactor (yes, simplify) and I typically lose 10% of the words.
• I’m getting better at seeing when a piece is mis-organized, but I’m still not so hot at organizing it until I get feedback from someone.

So my next deadline is Jan 1, to finish this draft and have the book ready for tech review. It will be tight, but do-able.

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