Being agile in an Agile Environment

Another of our clients has decided to move to an Agile development environment. We’ve worked in this style before but this was one of the first times (if not the first time) that we were there before the environment.

It was an interesting experience, watching a not-really-startup company redesign how it develops and releases its product. They brought in an Agile expert to guide them and I enjoyed being in on the training. From the start, it was clear that the only person really thinking about documentation…was me.

Constantly, I wanted to interrupt and say, “but documentation doesn’t work that way?” and “If you do that, how do you expect us to have the documentation ready?” Sometimes, I raised this issue with the expert, sometimes with the product managers. https://www.writepoint.com/blog/being-agile-in-an-agile-environment/ https://www.writepoint.com/blog/being-agile-in-an-agile-environment/ https://www.writepoint.com/blog/being-agile-in-an-agile-environment/Each time, in the midst of training the developers and QA, scrum masters and the newly forming scrum team, I was told that the questions were great, but the timing was wrong.

In the next few posts, I would like to write about:

  • What Agile Brings to the Company…and to Documentation
  • What Agile Brings to the Technical Writer (this is next)
  • Where the Technical Writer Fits in an Agile Environment (stay tuned)
  • Problems and Challenges Technical Writers Face in Agile (coming soon)
  • Is Agile better for the user? (we’ll get here)
  • Is Agile better for the technical writer? (this is on my list)
  • Tips for Finding Your Place in an Agile Company (wait for it)
  • Scrum Resources

I’ll probably think of more along the way, but these work for now. Stay tuned for more, as I walk you through the birth of an Agile development documentation process.