RE: User Documentation in XP environment (Possible Process)

[david -dot- locke -at- amd -dot- com]

XP was motivated to be methodology light. One of the troubling aspects of
methodology is that the meta deliverables become the deliverables. Stories
are supposed to be about the deliverables not the process used to create the
deliverables. The programmers do not have stories for coding and testing.
Neither should you.

XP focuses the programmer on coding. The architectural considerations that
usually precede programming are eliminated from the process. Instead, they
write code, they lean, they refactor, they rewrite code. The same should be
true for TW. They should write, they should learn, they should refactor,
they should rewrite. 

The story is the product itself. The documentation story is the story about
using the instructions to do the tasks coded in the software. The stories
should be finding the topic using the TOC, finding the topic using the
index, displaying a topic using the F1 key, performing the task from the
instructions. All but the last of these require coding to support them. The
programmers have to work here as much as the TW. Likewise, testing should
focus on these same tasks. 

A process focus is definitely not XP. 

David





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