ITauthor podcast #14 – August 29th, 2008 – Documentation and Agile Software Development
August 30th, 2008 7 Comments
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
What's it like doing documentation as part of an Agile software development team? Why is it a better way of working? I mull this over these and other questions with Graham Campbell. If you want to find out more about the Agile software development methodology, I'd recommend you read some of Scott Ambler's articles. For example: http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileDocumentation.htm An extract from Scott Ambler's best practices for increasing the agility of documentation:
Simplification * Keep documentation just simple enough, but not too simple * Write the fewest documents with least overlap Determining What to Document * Focus on the needs of the actual customers(s) of the document * The customer determines sufficiency Determining When to Document * Iterate, iterate, iterate: * Update only when it hurts General * Treat documentation like a requirement * Require people to justify documentation requests We also also discuss our writing tips, software recommendations and podcasts we've been listening to. Software we mentioned:
fileinfo.net
writerriver.com
Keepass
Podcast recommendations
The Penny Arcade Podcast:
RSS feed: http://www.penny-arcade.com/padlc.xml Dan Carlin's Hardcore History: 
RSS feed: http://www.dancarlin.com/dchh.xml
Other links
Testing documentation: http://www.onemanwrites.co.uk/2008/08/07/testingdocumentation/ The Almighty Thud by Martin Fowler: http://martinfowler.com/distributedComputing/thud.html
Get in touch!
I'd love to know who's listening, where you are and what you think of the podcast, so contact me at:
comments==AT==itauthor==DOT==com
Or just let me know you've listened in by putting a pin in the ITauthor map at:
http://www.frappr.com/itauthor
The music I play at the beginning and end of the show is by Amplifico. You can hear more of their music at Podshow.
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September 4th, 2008 at 9:41 pm (#)
Guys, great podcast (and it's a bit spooky that my photo is in the WriterRiver screenshot too!).
Nice to hear some fellow Scots talking around this stuff.
September 4th, 2008 at 9:55 pm (#)
[...] ITauthor podcast #14 - August 29th, 2008 - Documentation and Agile Software Development :: ITauthor. Gordon | September 4, 2008 | permalink [...]
September 10th, 2008 at 3:58 am (#)
[...] a recent IT Author podcast (”Documentation and Agile Development“), Alistair Christie and Graham Campbell talk about agile development and its impact on [...]
September 10th, 2008 at 4:10 pm (#)
Great podcast, as always. It gave me a lot to think about, and I responded with a blog post here. I'm not sure why the trackback didn't appear. Maybe you don't have them enabled for your theme?
September 14th, 2008 at 10:05 am (#)
Gordon,
Thanks for the comment. Keep up the good work over at
onemanwrites.
September 14th, 2008 at 10:08 am (#)
Tom
Thanks for your kind words and for mentioning the podcast on your blog. I just went over there and had a look and you started off a really interesting discussion.
All the best
Alistair
September 23rd, 2008 at 11:04 pm (#)
Thanks for the feedback, that was a great surprise, Glad to help, but Our QA guys are the one who found the issue with the stylesheet, Let me know if you need anything else