1. Information Development Projects
Managing Agile
Information Development Projects
STC-East Bay February, 2011

2. Agenda What is Agile development?
Principles
Methodologies
Practices
Challenges and opportunities for technical communicators
Agile information development
Planning
Estimating
Tracking
Discussion

3. What is Agile Development?
Brief History
Agile Manifesto’s four core values
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
12 Agile values (my short summary)
Collaborate with the customer
Accept and welcome change, even late in projects
Recognize that it is difficult to define requirements and recognize obstacles in advance
Promote teamwork, collaboration, and agility throughout the project life cycle

4. What are Agile Development Methodologies?
Scrum
Iterative development cycles called sprints
Daily standup meetings
Complete development process in each sprint
Extreme programming
Similar to Scrum
Coding in pairs
Strong emphasis on debugging for each release
Feature driven development
Develop feature by feature, not in sprints

5. Key Scrum Terms Planning terms Roles and Responsibilities Artifacts
Sprints
Product owner
Scrum
Scrum master
Velocity
Customer
Points
Developer
Poker
Information developer?
Artifacts
Requirements
Burndown chart
Stories
Product backlog
Themes
Sprint backlog
Epics

6. Initial Planning with Scrum
Define and prioritize broad list of "user stories" with entire team
Estimate effort for each story in terms of “points”
Prioritize requirements
Develop rough schedule
Communicate best and worst case schedule

7. Sprints Each sprint is a complete release cycle Sprint kickoff
Determine last iteration's velocity
Update the burndown rate
Start with high priority requirements first
Respond to changes to stories, schedules, estimates
Assign stories to team and individuals in terms of points
Daily scrum
All team members
10-15 minutes
Each member gives status update
Update activity on project board
Schedule time to resolve issues
Each sprint is a complete release cycle

8. Challenges for Information Developers
Writers
Collocation and collaboration
No specs to write from
Managers
Resource management
Need different types of writers
Project managers
Much different planning and execution processes

9. Challenges to Information Development
Project planning
Different planning documents
Planning and reconfiguring throughout the project
Hard to size efforts
Information development
Iterative development and high level of change
Review processes change
Editing
Teams are more autonomous
Timing and frequency of edits may change

10. Opportunities for Technical Communicators
Writers
Expand skills
Integrate and collaborate better with development team
Focus on user
Managers
Hire different writers
Expand scope of influence
Experiment
Project managers
New skills
Changing role--not necessarily confined to tech pubs role
Collaborate and facilitate

11. Initial Conclusions Embrace Agile.
Adopt Agile methodologies for info development.
Focus on the user.
Expand sphere of influence.
Advocate for your area of expertise.
Make it hard to outsource technical writing.

12. Planning Fundamentals
Planning is everything, plans are nothing!
As projects progress, so does project knowledge grow
Better understanding of user stories
Better estimates of effort
Able to correct early schedule estimates
Express the schedule as a range of iterations, not a firm date
Example: iterations
Reset expectations as project knowledge grows
Reset when stories are added or subtracted

13. Early Iteration Planning
Documentation is a user story too!
Agile information plan
Content matrix
Titles
Audiences
Delivery method
Packaging and localization requirements
User analysis/information architecture
Map information stories to project stories
Personas
Use cases
Scenarios
Release as early user documentation

14. Mid-Project Iteration Planning
Develop feature documentation
Update user analysis
Update earlier feature documentation
Start
Installation
Reference
Conceptual information
Produce documentation prototypes for each sprint
Act as QA for user expectations!

15. Late-Project Iteration Planning
Polish, review, complete information development
Start prototyping production output
Stay agile!
Prepare for launch:
Edit
Production
Localization
Packaging

16. Estimating What is an appropriate level of estimating?
Point of diminishing return
Too much analysis may even be more inaccurate!
What are sources of estimates
Expert opinion
Analogy
Disaggregation
We are most accurate when we estimate size relative to other items, not in absolute sizes

17. Planning Poker How big is the story in terms of points?
Each member must estimate
Write down number of points
Show answer at same time
“Reasonable time limit”
Defend estimates
Repeat until a general consensus emerges
Suggested point spreads:
1, 2, 4, 8
1, 2, 3, 5, 8
Sand buckets, not water buckets

18. Tracking Progress
Velocity = number of story points completed in an iteration
How to give credit for work complete
Only if 100% complete and accepted
Velocity will suffer for one iteration
Velocity will increase in the next
Over time, the trend will smooth out

19. Velocity, Re-planning, and Re-estimating
What if something takes longer or shorter than expected?
Don’t change the estimates, use the velocity to re-plan the delivery dates
Re-estimating
Not necessary if stories sizes relative to each other has not changed
Necessary if you recognize that the size of a story was not sized properly relative to other stories

20. Agile and Structured Writing
Pro’s
Topic oriented
Quick production
Quick localization
Cons
Inflexible
May not fit the organizational culture

21. Presentation Inputs Experience Discussions on STC management SIG
Survey
Literature review
Mike Cohn
James Highsmith
Internet
Draft of ISO standard for managing documentation in agile environments
I’m happy to share sources