Agile, SCRUM and Technical Writing

[Beth Agnew]

I would seriously doubt the validity of the research design if these 
were the conclusions. Having detailed requirements, i.e., knowing 
exactly where you're going, can only be a "leading cause of failure of 
IT projects" when people don't adhere to them. The fact that they 
mention change management suggests that the requirements were changed 
but the changes weren't managed. THAT will certainly lead to project 
failure.

This quotation raises some serious questions about how these studies 
were conducted. And certainly how they're being interpreted.

In both principle and practice, I think Agile development is a good 
thing, but like all methodologies it has to be managed and controlled, 
and the right roles assigned. In much of agile and extreme programming 
the documentation is left in the hands of the developers, and we know 
this is wrong. The user stories are a great idea, but techwriters need 
to be involved in that phase as well. Agile is an attempt to put the 
control of development into the hands of the developers; unfortunately 
development is not a one-department process.

Many of us have been doing "just in time" documentation for years!
--Beth

Gillespie, Terilyn wrote:
> Scott Ambler, from www.agilemodeling.com tells us: "One study
> found that the creation of detailed requirements documents early in a
> project and the change management procedures associated with doing so is
> the leading cause of failure on IT projects.  Another study found that
> the creation of detailed design models had no effect on the success of a
> software development."
>
>