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

AGENDA How Documentation Fits into Agile Documentation Approach in Agile Whole Team Approach Challenges Best Practices © 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

HOW DOCUMENTATION FITS INTO AGILE Product Backlog Sprint Backlog Refinement Planning Retrospective Daily Standup Deliverable SPRINT Review © 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

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 © 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

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

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 © 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

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

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 © 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

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

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

© 2016, STC INDIA CHAPTER

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