Creating User Documentation in an Agile World Jane Wilson

You say Scrum, I say Agile… “Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.” Adapt and Iterate (sprints)– Work continuously with customer Agile Manifesto - 2001 Scrum Ceremonies: Planning Daily Scrum Meetings Sprint Reiews Retrospectives Transparency and Simplicity Self-organizing Teams – create and point stories Fail Fast

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Scrum Team Where does the Technical Writer fit in? Scrum Master Product Owner Team Members

Technical Writer Specialized member of the scrum team Works with the PO and team to create doc stories Participates in scrum stand-up meetings Participates in planning and demo meetings Maintains content plan

Friendly Reminder… Writers cover multiple scrum teams! Teams need to be mindful of meeting times and frequency, story load.

Stories or Tasks?

Documentation Stories Documentation user stories should reflect all work done by a Technical Writer as part of the scrum team.

Documentation Stories Stories to document functionality being created by the development team. Stories relating to documentation-specific work. (These stories are much less common.)

Documentation Stories The big question – Story Points?

Documentation Stories Tips: Divide work into multiple stories (not a single catch-all story) Link a doc story to the related dev features 

Review Time Quality Process (InfoDev) Review for completeness and flow (scrum team) End-to-end review and sign-off by PMs

Your mileage may vary...

Participate in scrum ceremonies! Planning Daily Stand-ups Sprint Review Retrospective

, Learn about Agile,

Handy Phrases…. Don’t be afraid to throw the “B” word!

Handy Phrases…. “That’s not really Agile…”

Jane Wilson jwilson.stc@gmail.com jane.wilson@ge.com www.linkedin.com/in/jane-wilson-594a621