1. SUCCESS MANTRAS FOR BEING AN EFFECTIVE INFORMATION DEVELOPER IN AGILE
ARCHANA TIWARY
JYOTSANA KITCHLOO
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

2. AGENDA How Documentation Fits into Agile
Documentation Approach in Agile
Whole Team Approach
Challenges
Best Practices
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3. HOW DOCUMENTATION FITS INTO AGILE
Product
Backlog
Sprint
Backlog
Refinement
Planning
Retrospective
Daily Standup
Deliverable
SPRINT
Review
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4. HOW DOCUMENTATION FITS INTO AGILE
No separate phase for documentation; closely associated with the engineering activities
InfoDev is involved in the project from the beginning
Similar to software development and testing in Agile, documentation proceeds incrementally
Modular, user-centric documentation
Topic-oriented content
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5. DOCUMENTATION APPROACH IN AGILE
WHAT
WHEN
WHERE
HOW
No more, no less; only necessary information
Well distributed workload over the release cycle
Follows the “KIS & KIL” principle
>
>
>
Document As You Go
What: Align with the user persona. What type of deliverable is required? Tutorials? Training documentation? Maintenance support documentation? Business rules documentation?
When: No "Documentation Phase". Align your user stories with the engineering stories and document incrementally.
Where: Keep the available documentation in an accessible and dynamically updatable repository. The final documentation must be available for the target audience when the project is completed.
How: Till the real coding begins, spend time on understanding/documenting conceptual information, creating the doc epic (in this case high level TOC), and converting epic into user stories in alignment with the engineering release plan.
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

6. WHOLE TEAM APPROACH InfoDev is equal part of the team
Documentation efforts are included in the overall team’s estimates
InfoDev participates in all meetings and can discuss any impediment with the team proactively
Timely availability of information and timely documentation reviews
To consider a user story completed, all functions (dev + qa + doc) must complete the identified tasks in the specified sprint. Therefore, SMEs plan for doc activities (providing technical inputs and review) as part of their effort == InfoDev gets timely inputs
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7. CHALLENGES Handling meetings Working with multiple agile teams
Capacity planning
Communication
Meetings
Documentation, similar to code, can be discarded at any point during the project due to change in the requirement
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

8. CHALLENGES (CONTINUED)
Difficult to write in the first few sprints due to lack of enough knowledge resources and instability of the product/feature
Dynamic changes in functionality that impacts the doc
Keeping up with co-located and geographically distributed teams at the same time
Last minute changes
Edit reviews
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9. BEST PRACTICES Plan the capacity Organize the work
Ramp up in initial sprints
Be involved
Getting Inputs
Speak up
Plan the capacity: Prioritize your work and plan your time accordingly. Keep sufficient buffer time to accommodate last minute changes.
Organize the work: Create an "epic" for the overall documentation set, break down the epic into user stories, and ensure that all stories fit together after completing the epic.
Ramp up in initial sprints: Spend the time on understanding the product/feature and creating a high-level TOC.
Be involved: Get involved in various scrum meetings and all areas of development (requirements, design, development, testing, and UI reviews).
Getting Inputs: Interact with all resources working on a specific feature rather than relying on a single point of contact.
Speak up: Ask your team if anything is not clear to you in daily standup meetings. Be vocal in sharing your views.
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

10. BEST PRACTICES (CONTINUED)
Research
Cope up with the last minute changes 
Adhere to minimalism
Trim the excess content
Teaming
Skip meetings
Ask for a hardening iteration
Research: Dig for information as you would not have a comprehensive functional specification doc available for your reference.
Coping up with the last minute changes: In sprint review meetings, emphasize that any UI-affecting work should be done in earlier or mid sprints, not towards the last of the lifecycle.
Adhere to minimalism: Start small. Focus on the smallest unit of content. Then, expand the content by adding more explanations.
Trim the excess content: Do not deliver big content just because your SMEs want more documentation. Document only necessary information.
Teaming: Align your user stories with engineering user stories.
Skip meetings: Yes, this is not a typo. You can skip a meeting if it does not add value to the documentation. For example, code review meetings.
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

11. © 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

12. THANK YOU jyotsana.kitchloo@microfocus.com
© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER