TechWhirl (TECHWR-L) is a resource for technical writing and technical communications professionals of all experience levels and in all industries to share their experiences and acquire information.
For two decades, technical communicators have turned to TechWhirl to ask and answer questions about the always-changing world of technical communications, such as tools, skills, career paths, methodologies, and emerging industries. The TechWhirl Archives and magazine, created for, by and about technical writers, offer a wealth of knowledge to everyone with an interest in any aspect of technical communications.
Re: Managing documentation in a rapid/agile/extreme programming environment
Subject:Re: Managing documentation in a rapid/agile/extreme programming environment From:"Eric J. Ray" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com> To:Robert_Johnson -at- percussion -dot- com Date:Wed, 10 Sep 2003 08:19:11 -0600 (MDT)
On Wed, 10 Sep 2003 Robert_Johnson -at- percussion -dot- com wrote:
>Most of what I've been able to find on the web about documentation in
>agaile environments is about internal code documentation rather than about
>product user documentation. Does anyone who has worked in an
>agile/rapid/extreme environment have any recommendations about managing
>user documentation in that environment?
We've had pretty good luck keeping the docs in a Twiki
for the raw content as long as possible, then dumping
them into SGML for production at the last minute.
Maintaining them in Twiki allows everyone to "own" the
content, and keeps the writer from being a bottleneck in
the XP (eXtreme Programming) process. The engineers are
quite responsible about making their
annotations/corrections/comments clear, which helps.
After dumping into SGML, of course, collaboration becomes
much more difficult.