Re: I'm now blogging about Agile & TW

[Chris Despopoulos <despopoulos_chriss -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

RE the following statement:

There are also bad ways to integrate documentation into the process,
so that writers waste a lot of time in irrelevant meetings and dealing
with impossible deadlines.

In Agile you are a professional, and a relatively free agent.  If you waste time in irrelevant meetings, then you're not doing your job critically.  The only required meeting is the daily stand-up where you meet for 15 minutes *only* and if you're not a pig you keep your mouth shut.  Other meetings may be spawned out of this, and you might be invited to some.  It's up to you to decide whether to invite yourself when invitations are not extended, and turn down invitations that are irrelevant.  YOU are the documentation professional on the team.  How documentation gets integrated is largely up to you.

That said, the impossible deadlines are a real issue, for three reasons.  First, management has trouble assigning a writer to only one SCRUM team.  SCRUM openly states that 100% participation on a team is paramount, but Doc and QA rarely get that luxury.  I have LOTS to say about that!  The second problem is maintenance...  As the product grows, your previous work often changes, and at the same time you have new stuff to write.  There can be a tipping point where the volume of changes outstrips the new stuff.  You have to anticipate maintenance, and include it in the estimates.  Finally, the code doesn't usually freeze until the last week of the sprint, or later.  I'm sure you can see the problem...  There are creative ways around this, and I have experienced overall success.  

I would say the biggest problem is doc management, where undervaluing the writer's contribution leads to later integration, and assignment to many different teams.  As usual, it's a matter of education.

cud


      
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