Agile documentation in the blogosphere

This is a tough topic to research. Using the words “agile” and “documentation” in the same search query returns a mixed bag of results. Some citing that the Agile Manifesto‘s goal of “Working software over comprehensive documentation” to mean that Agile products need little to no documentation. A more realistic and practical interpretation of that line is to treat documentation as any other component of the project.

A project or product should not have features that do not add value. It should not have code that doesn’t add value. Nor should it have documentation that doesn’t add value.

I’ll go along with that, but when it comes to reading what others have to say about technical writing, searching for “agile technical writing” returned this collection (in no particular order):

That’s quite a list and a range of perspectives. They range in age from 2 to 12 years old, with an average of 6.3 years.

Some early observations:

  • The earlier ones seemed to explain Agile more than the more recent articles.
  • They all offered tips for writers in one form or another
  • About half were written as first-person experience reports and the other half in more of a third-person, instructional format.
  • Most were written in a narrative format with a few as just bullets or bullets with some details.
  • Only a few cited additional references (although most had embedded links to related topics)

I’m not sure what conclusions to draw from this, yet. For perspective, I wanted to do a similar survey of academic literature, but searching for “Agile technical writing” didn’t produce much to read. Hmmmm….

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