1. Producing Quality
Documentation in an Agile
Development Environment
Christine Marini Sigman
Principal Technical Writer
Endeca Technologies

2. About this session
Agile overview
– Why Agile methodologies arose and why many developers love
them
About Scrum
– Scrum vocabulary and artifacts
– A month in the life of a Scrum team
Scrum and documentation
– Scrum and the individual writer
– The role of the doc manager and doc team in Scrum
– Biggest challenges with Scrum
– Greatest advantages to Scrum
– Additional resources
– Questions and answers
Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

3. Agile Overview
Agile software development refers to a group of software
development methodologies that are based on similar principles.
Agile methodologies generally promote:
– A project management process that encourages frequent
inspection and adaptation.
– A leadership philosophy that encourages team work, self-
organization and accountability.
– A set of engineering best practices that allow for rapid
delivery of high-quality software.
– A business approach that aligns development with customer
needs and company goals.
Wikipedia
Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

4. About Scrum
Scrum is one of the Agile methodologies. The name refers to a rugby
scrum, in which the whole team together moves the ball toward
the goal.
Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

5. Scrum is Iterative
Plan
(based on product Develop
backlog)
Present and Review
Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

6. Scrum participants
The product owner represents the customer and brings stories
from the backlog to the team.
The scrum master serves as project manager and obstacle
remover. This person interacts on a regular basis with his or her
counterparts outside the team.
The cross-functional team consists of five to nine people who do
the actual work. A team typically includes some mixture of the
following:
– Software developers
– Architects
– UI designers
– QA engineers
– Technical writers
In most cases, this team will work together over several months.
Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

7. Scrum artifacts
Scrum relies on the following artifacts:
The product backlog of high-level stories. In a product software
environment, this may be unified across several teams.
The sprint backlog of stories selected by one team for an iteration.
Burndown charts that graphically expose the team’s progress on a
daily basis.
Scrum relies on the following meetings:
The daily standup (or scrum), where team members check in and
report status
A monthly planning session, where the team reviews stories with
the product owner and commits to completing a certain amount of
work.
A monthly retrospective, in which the team critiques its own
processes.
A monthly review, where the team presents the month’s work.
Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

8. Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

9. Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

10. What’s different about Scrum, besides the
lingo?
Shorter release cycles
Much more visibility, in every direction
More autonomy (and more self-management
required)
Fewer traditional software artifacts, such as
design documents and functional specs
Within a few iterations, much more productive
software developers
Often, much greater focus on a smaller piece of
the product
Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

11. The role of documentation in Scrum
Agile methodologies are not as “anti-documentation” as we
sometimes hear (or fear), but it takes planning and advocacy
not to feel like an afterthought.
When reading up on Scrum theory and methodology, keep in
mind that the term “documentation” frequently refers to
internal documents such as specifications, design documents,
meeting notes, even code comments—and not to product
documentation.
Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

12. The writer and the team
In Scrum, team orientation is essential! That
means:
Sitting with your team if you can
Attending all Scrum meetings
Coming up with new ways to get information
Being interested in everyone’s work, even if it
doesn’t affect the documentation
Communicating your own tasks and needs clearly
Sharing your status
Helping out on non-doc tasks, time permitting
Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

13. The writer and self-management
In Scrum, you’ll typically be required to:
Extract tasks from requirements
Accurately estimate how long it will take you to
complete these tasks
Prioritize among tasks
Publicly track your progress, communicate status,
and point out any obstacles to success
Advocate for what you need from the team
Negotiate the notion of “doc completeness” for
each iteration
Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

14. Scrum dos and don’ts for doc managers
DO: 7. Learn to hire “Scrum wise.”
1. Hammer out mutually-acceptable 8. Let writers determine their own
definitions for things like “iteration as estimates.
release” and “doc completeness” so 9. Express your own team’s work in
each of your team members doesn’t terms of Scrum.
have to fight that battle for himself or DON’T:
herself.
10. Expect “guest” writers to take on
2. Negotiate with Scrum team significant work on others’ teams
management so the writers’ role without ramp up.
becomes consistent across teams in
your organization. 11. Forget the big picture—in Scrum, doc
can become the voice of reason for
3. Learn from writers who integrate things like integration.
successfully on to their teams, and
propagate their practices onto less 12. Take all the meetings yourself (unless
successful team matchups. you are doing all of the associated
writing).
4. Rotate writers on “difficult” teams.
Give everyone a chance to be 13. Overburden individual writers with too
successful. many team memberships.
5. Keep control of your own people!
6. Keep control of your own processes!
Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

15. Scrum and the documentation team
Bridge knowledge gaps
Learn new strategies for dealing with Scrum
Share/rotate workload
Handle centralized tasks such as editorial,
production, and localization/internationalization
services
Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

16. Things to watch out for
Membership on too many teams
Teams that are too large to be effective
Rigid attitudes from Scrum dogmatists and
theologians
Inconsistent definitions of scrum terms
Uneven flow of work across iteration
Conflict between iteration schedules and release
schedules
Distraction or diversion from your primary role as
technical communicator
Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

17. What you can gain from Scrum
Team integration and support
Increased autonomy
Increased visibility
Improved workflow
Opportunities to grow in (or beyond) your current
role
Better chance of working with happy SMEs
Better chance of working for a successful
company
Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.

18. Additional resources
The Scrum Development Yahoo group
(scrumdevelopment@yahoogroups.com)
The Scrum Alliance (www.scrumalliance.org)
Cohn, Mike. User Stories Applied for Agile Software Development.
Boston: Pearson Education, 2004.
Schwaber, Ken, and Mike Beedle. Agile Software Development with
Scrum. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002.
Schwaber, Ken. Agile Project Management with Scrum. Redmond,
WA: Microsoft Press, 2004.
Nuckols, Carl, and Jeff Canna. “eXtreme Documentation,” Intercom,
February 2003
Sigman, Christine. “Adapting to Scrum: Challenges and Strategies,”
Intercom, July/August 2007
Copyright©2008 Endeca Technologies, Inc. All rights reserved.
Proprietary and confidential.