Wanted Team Players

Wanted: Team Players!

Using Agile Principles to
Create Documentation
Projects
Megan Leney
VeriSign, Inc.
1

Introduction and Definitions
Benefits of Agile
How Agile Gets You There
Agile at VeriSign
Increasing Team Influence
Improving Processes
Planning Deliverables
Challenges

Introduction

+ 2001: Agile Manifesto and principles

+ Scrum is one of many Agile methods

4

The Agile Manifesto

http://www.agilemanifesto.org

5

A Summary of Agile Principles
+ Create value
+ Welcome change
+ Frequent delivery of working software
+ All functional teams are involved
+ Trust stakeholders, and give them what they need
+ Face-to-face interaction is essential
+ Working software measures progress
+ Sustainable development
+ Continuous attention to excellence
+ Simplicity is essential
+ Self-organizing teams
+ Retrospectives

Source: Wikipedia

6

Definitions
+ Scrum
▪ Daily check in meeting
▪ You report progress and blocking issues
▪ Part of a sprint (or iteration)

+ Sprint (or Iteration)
▪ Iterative development cycle
▪ Length is determined by team

+ Stakeholder
▪ A team member who is committed to the success of the project
▪ Examples are Product Owner, Scrum Master, and others.

+ User Stories
▪ Simple stories that reflect customer requirements
▪ The basis for backlog items and tasks

Source: Wikipedia

7

Benefits of Agile

+ Creates options
▪ Product always potentially shipable
▪ More flexibility
▪ Keeps up with customer demands
▪ More room for innovation

+ Improves quality
▪ No stop ship bugs at end of iteration
▪ Following this rule improves quality

+ Reduces risk
▪ Accurately scoping features
▪ Committing to as much work as you can afford
▪ Never taking on too much work

9

Gaining Valuable Knowledge

+ Tacit knowledge (intellectual capital)
▪ Most valuable form of knowledge
▪ Gained only from conversations
▪ Most only harvest 5-10%, but 20% is optimal
▪ Agile is a smart methodology for gaining tacit knowledge

+ Explicit knowledge
▪ Can be documented
▪ Easily transmitted to others
▪ Technical communicators produce it
▪ Agile improves the quality of explicit knowledge deliverables

Source: Wikipedia

11

Collective Intelligence

12

How Collective Intelligence Works

+ Diversity
+ Decentralization
+ One collective verdict
+ Independence

13

Agile at VeriSign
+ Early Agile at VeriSign
▪ Adopted Agile July, 2006
▪ Didn’t understand Agile
▪ Had to adapt to developer-centric process
▪ No formal training, steep learning curve

+ Initial challenges
▪ Lacked sprint planning skills
▪ No training on scrum process
▪ Didn’t understand iterative documentation
▪ Worked with distributed teams

+ Making progress
▪ Set expectations with initial “brown bag” presentation
▪ Outlined Documentation team involvement
▪ Still not fully engaged in the process

+ Refining the process
▪ All teams are now Agile
▪ Better understanding of process
▪ Some training
▪ Daily engagement
▪ Confronting challenges, but more informed

Source: Wikipedia

15


Functional Groups Product Teams

http://www.fotosearch.com

17


+ Attend all meetings to:
▪ Improve visibility
▪ Be a recognized member of the team
▪ Gain valuable information
▪ Have a forum for blocking issues

+ Increasing “group-mindedness”
▪ Tasks are a team effort
▪ One group blocked = team problem!
▪ Help with other stakeholders’ tasks

+ Practicing active communication
▪ Ask questions to clarify issues
▪ Be specific in reporting status

18


+ Architecting the documentation deliverables
▪ Present informed options
▪ Be a user advocate
▪ Align with the product owner

+ Showing the team what we do
▪ Stress the importance of good design
▪ Educate team on task scope

19

Improving Processes
+ Accessing subject matter experts
▪ Knowing each team member’s specialty
▪ Developing relationships

+ More technically-savvy documentation
▪ Learning details during daily meetings
▪ Taking longer discussions “offline”

+ Better response to change
▪ Team strategy to adapt to product changes
▪ Keeping the customer in mind

+ Using organizational tools
▪ Using ScrumWorks to track tasks for our projects
▪ Accessing user stories in SourceForge to understand features
▪ Using Subversion to create product builds in our own workspace

21

A Typical Two-Week Iteration
Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri

Iteration Planning Daily Scrum Daily Scrum Daily Scrum Daily Scrum
Meeting

Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri

Daily Scrum Daily Scrum Daily Scrum Daily Scrum Handoff

(Go/No Go) Retrospective

Iteration planning: Product manager and team meet to review next set of items from
the backlog. Team updates task board.
Daily Scrum: What have you done since last meeting?
What will you do before next meeting?
What is in your way?
Review: Meet with Product Owner to review and accept/reject work.
Retrospective: Review and reflect on process and how it can be improved.

©2007 Enthiosys

23

Iterative and Holistic Planning

+ Iterative planning
▪ Documentation plan captures scope and time line
▪ Plan backlog items and tasks with team
▪ Feature-specific reviews each sprint

+ Holistic documentation
▪ Holistic review late in the release cycle
▪ Team sees “big picture”
▪ All team members are required reviewers

26

Lack of Training

+ On the job training isn’t enough
+ Need task planning skills
▪ Points valuation
▪ How to break down tasks
▪ How to plan effort level
▪ Weighing task estimation against skill level

+ Need iterative documentation strategy
▪ Keeping up with iterative done-done-done
▪ Holistic reviews without scrambling

28

No Up Front Information Architecture

Could be any/all of:
- Technical architecture
Vision - Business architecture
- Information (UI) architecture
Architecture design and overall specification

Micro-project Micro-project Micro-project Feature design

Coding

Integration/Test

User Feedback User Feedback User Feedback Stabilization

iter0

©2007 Enthiosys Source: Alan MacCormack

29

Lack of Scalability Strategy

Project Size/Scope Issues Implementation
▪ Product changes and ▪ Writers attend development
+Simple
development cycles. planning meetings, scrums, and
hand off meetings
Above issues, plus: ▪ Possibly an informal scrum of
+Moderately Complex scrums
▪ Multiple development cycles
▪ Communications across teams

▪ Product UI needs a consistent ▪ Information Architecture is
+Highly Complex
look and feel elevated to release planning level
▪ Need holistic documentation ▪ Formal scrum of scrums
across projects

30

Lack of Higher Level Planning

+ Currently no scrum of scrums
▪ Difficulty planning writers’ hours across projects
▪ Writer starts mid-cycle
▪ Lack of feature parity/consistent vocabulary

+ Need terminology review board
▪ Lack of consistent terminology
▪ Different vocabulary = different user experience

+ Some interim solutions
▪ Good paper trail
▪ Mentor relationships
▪ Boot camp training

31

Working with Distributed Teams

+ Issues with distributed teams
▪ Not conducive to Agile methods
▪ Daily communication is difficult

+ The reality
▪ Definite business case for many
▪ Companies merge with/acquire distant partners

+ Long-term workarounds
▪ Transition to co-located teams where possible
▪ Limit distributed locations and team members

32

Working with Distributed Teams

+ Coping with the situation
▪ Realize it won’t be perfect
▪ Weekly and “as needed” documentation synch up meetings
▪ Keep meetings short
▪ Centralized repositories for builds and information
▪ Scrum Master resides with the majority of team members
▪ Same scrum coach working with all team members
▪ Be respectful of other peoples’ time
▪ Compromise on meeting times
▪ Very thorough documentation artifacts
▪ Handoffs when everyone can attend

33

Top 10 Take Aways

10. Use best practices in working with distributed teams
9. Plan documentation iteratively and holistically
8. Treat the project as a group effort
7. Help product team see the value of a good user experience
6. Improve your cake layer (functional group)
5. Improve your cake slices (product teams)
4. Leverage tacit knowledge and group intelligence
3. Actively participate in all meetings
2. Hold higher level planning meetings (scrum of scrums)
1. Architect your deliverables during release planning

34

Resources
Books
+ Cohn, Mike. (2004). User stories applied: for agile software
development. Boston:Addison-Wesley.
+ Frappaolo, Carl. (2006). Knowledge Management. West Sussex,
England: Capstone Publishing Ltd.
+ Polanyi, Michael. (1983). The Tacit Dimension. Glouester, MA:Peter
Smith.
+ Suroweicki, James. (2004). The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many
Are Smarter than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes
Business, Economies, Societies, and Nations. New York: Random
House.

36 Megan Leney; mleney@verisign.com

Resources
Presentations and Case Studies
+ Heimgartner, Stacia and Locke, Melody. (2006). A Tale of Two
Writing Teams. Presented at the Agile2006 Conference by Rally
Software Development.
+ Hohmann, Luke. (2007). Agile Planning and Project Management:
Agile is all about planning for and participating in the infinite game.
Presented by Enthiosys.
+ Toyoshiba, Len and Najafi, Maryam. (2008). Two Case Studies of
User Experience Design and Agile Development. Presented at the
Agile2008 conference by VeriSign, Inc.


Resources
Blogs and other Web resources
+ Abbott, Jennifer. (Accessed October 15, 2008). Agile
Documentation: Help’s Role in the Development Process.
WritersUA.:
http://www.writersua.com/ohc/suppmatl/suppmatl07/abbott.pdf.
+ Agile Open California. (Accessed November 4, 2008). A self-
organizing group that uses an Open Space forum to discuss Agile
topics. http://www.agileopencalifornia.com/.
+ Ambler, Scott. (Accessed October 15, 2008). Can Documentation
be Agile? Dr. Dobb’s Portal: http://www.ddj.com/184415786 .
+ Beedle, Mike, et al. (Accessed October 15, 2008). The Agile
Manifesto. Manifesto for Agile Software Development:
http://www.agilemanifesto.org.


Resources
Blogs and other Web resources (Continued)
+ Fox, Alyssa and Kramer, Meredith. (Accessed October 15, 2008) Mobile
and Agile: The Floating Writer’s Survival Kit. Writer’s UA:
http://www.winwriters.com/articles/AGILE/index.html.
+ Gentle, Anne. (Accessed October 15, 2008). How to be an Agile Technical
Writer with a cool acronym like XTW. Just Write Click Blog:
http://justwriteclick.com/2008/02/19/how-to-be-an-agile-technical-writer-
with-a-cool-acronym-like-xtw/.
+ Gentle, Anne. (Accessed October 15, 2008). Writing End-User
Documentation in an Agile Development Environment. Just Write Click
Blog: http://justwriteclick.com/2007/07/02/writing-end-user-documentation-
in-an-agile-development-environment/.
+ Gentle, Anne. (Accessed October 15, 2008). STC2008 Wrap up STC
Summit trip report. Just Write Click Blog: http://justwriteclick.com/tag/agile/.


Resources
Blogs and other Web resources (Continued)
+ Kuhnen, Eric. (Accessed October 15, 2008). Excellent and Consistent
Content Development through Agile and Scrum. The Content Wrangler
Community:
http://www.thecontentwrangler.com/article/excellent_and_consistent_conte
nt_development_through_agile_and_scrum/.
+ Maddox, Sarah. (Accessed October 15, 2008). The Agile Technical Writer.
ffeathers-a technical writer’s blog:
http://ffeathers.wordpress.com/2008/01/20/the-agile-technical-writer/.
+ Maddox, Sarah. (Accessed October 15, 2008). ffeathers-a technical writer’s
blog: The Agile Technical Writer II.
http://ffeathers.wordpress.com/2008/01/26/the-agile-technical-writer-ii/.
+ Wethington, Mike. (Accessed October 15, 2008). Day in the Life of an Agile
Writer. The Content Wrangler Community:
http://thecontentwrangler.ning.com/group/agiledevelopmentandtechnicalco
mmunications/forum/topic/show?id=2008157%3ATopic%3A29824.


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