Documentation is not for Agile! Really?

Sergiy ZhuravelBusiness Analyst at SoftServe

PMP, CSP, CSPO, PSPO

1. Some Agile2. Cases3. Why do we hate to create any documentation4. MVP for documentation5. Tips and tricks

Agenda

Working Software over comprehensive documentation

Good documentation is useful in helping people to understand how the software is built and how to use it, but the main point of development is to create software, not documentation.

Agile seeks to minimize waste, so taken to its logical extreme, all documentation is waste.

Some Agile…

I do not need any documentation. I’m Agile.

Some Agile…

Some Agile…

Documentation

Discussion

Case 1 – Demo day

Who are you?

Where is my team?

Who is my manger?

What should I do?

What should I read?

What is a CID and NDC11?

A pushed my task into the default, cool?

How to setup the environment?

Case 2 - Newcomer

What is my project about?

Case 3 – Additional scope? Why?

Why do you have this story in the sprint?! It was on previous Demo!

Case 3 – Additional scope? Why?

But we have discussed it…It has a sub-bug…The minor one…

Why do we hate to create any documentation?

What the … have you written?

To document this – Neeever!

Why do we hate to create any documentation?

I’ll write the documentation –you will fire me

Why do we hate to create any documentation?

Some really shot documents list you must have

Why do we hate to create any documentation

Why do we hate to create any documentation?

I'll waste my time for something useless

nobody cares

Why do we hate to create any documentation?

I often find processes with no consumers. Pure waste! Literally nobody uses the output, but the producer doesn't realize it.

Michael Nygard

1. Who is the consumer of the documentation?2. What do they need?3. How do you deliver it to them?4. How do you know when they're ready for it?5. How do you produce it?6. What inputs do you need to produce it?

Questions before any action about documentation

1. Communication plan2. Vision3. Newcomers guide4. Glossary5. (Budgeting and planning)6. What Scrum/Kanban etc. do we have?

MVP for documentation

1. Communication plan (who, how, when, what is a result?)1. Perform a situation analysis;2. Define your objectives;3. Define your key audiences;4. Identify media channels (meeting notes etc.);5. Establish a timetable;6. Evaluate the results (reports).

Tips and tricks

2. Vision

Tips and tricks

3. Newcomers guide1. Start point for all basic documentation2. Who are all these people? (name, photo, birthday, contact etc.)3. Some info about roles4. …

Tips and tricks

4. Glossary1. Common project and processes terminology2. Updated by newcomers as a part of adaptation period3. Use links to web

Tips and tricks

6. What Scrum/Kanban etc. do we have?1. Do you really have Scrum? Really?2. Define Scrum BUT part3. Draw requirements -> feature workflow4. DoD

Tips and tricks

Q&A

We really do not like to write useless docs.

Make it valuable for your and the team.

Sergiy Zhuravel

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