“We are not writing documentation! We are Agile!” – scream they.
“We are Agile, we don’t write useless documentation” – Agile people say. “We don’t write documentation – we are Agile” – other people hear.
What a heck is this? How did we get there? Maybe we should start saying “We are Agile, we create useful documentation”. Maybe then everyone will understand that documentation in Agile takes very important part.
The challenge is to identify what is useful documentation and depending on type of company that challenge comes with a different flavor. For example in mature companies it is about removed useless documentation and in start-ups it is about figuring out what is useful and start doing that.
Let me emphasize this:
Phew.. So, let me give you few examples what is useful and what could be useless documentation. Actually instead of naming exact documentation I will give you 2 good goals for writing documentation:
- Support project you are developing
- Ability to maintain your solution in the future
Feel free to work out with your team to figure out what that would mean for You.
Now let me give you one useless documentation. Actually it might be useful, but that would indicate that something is wrong. Handover documentation from one function to another (from developers to testers or release team) should be useless. In case it is useful it means that either you don’t have cross-functional teams or your team members are not T-Shaped. Or maybe it is something else, but it is you who should find the answer
Simonas Razminas blog 