Extreme Technical Writing (was RE: Flexibility and changing requirements)

["Earl Cooley" <shiva -at- io -dot- com>]

Lisa Wright wrote: 
> [...]
> This is the whole idea behind XP programming--you design as you go.
> You're flexible. You don't invest a lot in developing things that are
> miles down the road. You deal with the here and now. You plan for short
> iterations of a product based on known requirements. Actually, you're
> not even supposed to deal with ALL the known requirements, though that
> one's a struggle. "Just ignore the 2-ton elephant in the corner. He
> doesn't get involved until *much* later!"
> 
> The key part is that you are highly flexible. Hackos is right: people
> often don't know what they want until they begin to see it take shape.
> So instead of running them through the "you didn't stick to our process"
> mill, you have a process where change is a natural, expected,
> encouraged, nay, critical part of the process that enables you to get
> the best product with very high customer satisfaction.
> 
> I apply this approach in my own writing, though it's hardly formalized.
> It lets me respond quickly to new features and functions, to the
> tweaking and refining that the developers always do, to last minute
> customer requests. I very much recommend reading up on XP just to get a
> sense of the dynamic involved. There are several books, including
> "Extreme Programming Explained." Despite it's very flexible nature, it
> is a structured process full of planning and checkpoints, so everybody
> can be happy.

So, how does a technical writer integrate with an XP programming 
team? 

While I was thinking about this, I found this essay on Agile 
Documentation: 

<http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileDocumentation.htm> 

There was a discussion of agile documentation on the 
extremeprogramming Yahoo!Group a few days ago, but it 
seemed to focus on the documentation of code and not 
on user documentation.

--
 e=sc^3 (shiva -at- io -dot- com) Earl Cooley III


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