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.