Re: Agile, SCRUM and Technical Writing

["Tlyn" <terilyn -dot- gillespie -at- ddiworld -dot- com>]

OK, I really don't expect anyone on this list to agree with the
aforementioned "research" telling us that comprehensive requirements
and functional specs are overkill; afterall, that's what many of us
"do".

What would be more useful to me would be hearing from writers who have/
are currently working with an Agile methodology, again, in terms of
how this may be affecting your writing tasks/products, function on the
team, successes/failures, etc.  Has the switch to agile changed how
you "do" documentation?  Thanks.

Terilyn


On Feb 16, 2:09 pm, Peter Neilson <neil -dot-  -dot-  -dot-  -at- windstream -dot- net> wrote:
> Lemme try to think through what might be going on here. We can divide
> software projects up into various binary categories:
>
> 1(a/b). Have (or do not have) a good insight on a product and a good team.
> 2(a/b). Perform (or do not perform) early documentation of plans and
> designs.
> 3(a/b). Produce (or do not produce) a successful product.
>
> 1b rarely leads to 3a, I'm sure, regardless of what is done with 2.
> Including a large number of badly conceived projects in a study will
> indeed show that documentation efforts do not help. "You can't wash
> sh*t," as a fellow TW once said.
>
> So a proper study on the effectiveness of early documentation should
> focus mostly on projects that were started by experienced and/or
> cohesive teams working towards a reasonably well understood goal. But
> how would one select those, the "1a" subgroup, from the entire 1a+1b?
> How could one tell which is which?
>
> The only way that I could imagine is by reading the planning and process
> documents. Those are hard to come by for successful projects, because
> they are generally proprietary. For failed projects they (if any) are
> either going to be pieces of crap that are part of the failure, or
> after-the-fact memoranda that show why someone else was to blame for the
> failure. Once in a while they might be gold that was set aside in a vain
> attempt to use the precious dross.
>
> What have I come up with? Am I right, or am I instead all out of focus,
> or involved in petitio principii, or perhaps merely echoing someone
> else's much more erudite and well constructed research?


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