Re: The Technical Writer vs. Agile Development Methodologies

[Tracy Taylor <ipsque -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

Hiya - 

Agile doesn't preclude reviews.

With Agile, you're trying to get one small piece of
functionality designed, coded, and ready to release in
an iteration (two or three weeks).  You know the
functionality is ready to release because it meets
acceptance tests such as a code review.  So a
documentation review is considered part of the
acceptance tests.  They also do acceptance tests at
the release level as well.

I know every devevelopment team is different, but ours
was very open to incorporating doc processes into
Agile.

Also, I found that the writers I managed got the
information they needed easiest on the teams with the
strictest Agile processes.

Oh, and by a lot of time in development meetings, I
meant about 20 hours a week.

Cheers, Tracy

--- Anna Junglas <ajunglas -at- hotmail -dot- com> wrote:


---------------------------------

This sounds like the description that I was provided
in a recent interview.

Additionally it was mentioned that if I slow down the
development process by trying to collect doc info,
then I'd be out the door....  :)

I'm all for the gleening process.  But it seems like
there would also need to be time allotted for
reviews...?  Under your definition below, I guess that
would happen in code reviews?  Do Agile developers do
code reviews?

-Anna





---------------------------------

From:  Tracy Taylor <ipsque -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To:  techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com,
bonnie -dot- turner -at- oracle -dot- com
Subject:  Re: The Technical Writer vs. Agile
Development Methodologies
Date:  Tue, 31 Jan 2006 13:18:26 -0800 (PST)
>--- A <aurora -at- identicloak -dot- com> wrote:
>
>The fallacy of Agile is that software can
> > be made so that
> > it requires no documentation.
>
>I don't think that's a correct assumption about Agile
>methodologies.  The principle is that developers
value
>working software over complete documentation, meaning
>functional and technical requirements - they'd rather
>have software that works than spend time writing
>designs.  The main complaint about this for writers
is
>that they have to spend more time than usual in
>meetings and absorbing information from conversations
>developers have around them to get the information
>they need.
>
>I think Agile has very little to say about user
>documentation or implementation guides.  I managed a
>documentation group that worked with a team using
>Agile methods and we never found articles or books
>about how writers use Agile issues.
>
>Cheers, Tracy
>
>
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