Mobile and agile the floating writer's survival kit

Mobile and Agile: The Floating
Writer's Survival Kit

Alyssa Fox
Information Development Manager
Meredith Kramer
Lead Information Developer

© 2008 NetIQ Corporation. All rights reserved.

Making the Transition
Terminology
 Scrum – An agile development approach that emphasizes
close communication through daily stand-up meetings.
 Scrum master – The team member who facilitates scrum
meetings and works to remove blocks that prevent team
members from proceeding with their work.
 Iteration – A short period of time in which a full software
development cycle occurs.
 Backlog – The repository for all requirements and wish list
items for the project.
 Capacity – The maximum amount of hours a team member
can work during one iteration.

2 © 2008 NetIQ Corporation. All rights reserved.

Design Documents
 Moving from specs to user story documents
− Shorter, more fluid documents
− Allows for easier refinement and rework upon customer
feedback
− Helps floating writers not get bogged down in lengthy specs
when they are brought on to the project
 Paper prototyping with screenshots and detailed
functionality information


Adapting Your Review Cycle
 Use three drafts: first draft, approval draft, quality
edit draft.
 Write doc for a feature in the iteration it is
developed and tested.
 Keep the user story open until Dev/QE has
reviewed the documentation for technical accuracy.
 Consider doing away with a formal first draft for
more mature products and documentation libraries.
 Use the full approval draft as a means to show the
new documentation in context of the entire book.


Adapting Your Review Cycle - Advantages
 QE and Development no longer have to review an entire book
(or multiple books) during one of the busiest times of the
release cycle.
 Info Dev gets more thorough reviews since QE and Dev have
more time each iteration to review pieces of the
documentation.
 The documentation is more technically accurate and of a
higher quality due to more thorough reviews.
 The floating writer’s needed capacity for an approval draft is
reduced because most of the work has already been done in
previous iterations.
 If you have multiple books on multiple products, there is not
as big of a hit all at once on your time.
 Floating writers have a more complete document with which
to work for an iteration or two.

Gaining Clout on the Product Team


Speak Up!
 Take the initiative to get involved in ALL parts of the
product development.
 Attend scrum meetings for the projects in which
you’re involved.
 Be detailed and specific when asking questions or
giving information to others.
 Pave the way for any other writers that may join the
team later.


Sample Scrum Topics – Development
 Bad: “I’m working on the installer.”
 Good: “I’m working on the new installer screens that contain
user credentials for accessing the database. I need some help
with text on these new screens, so I’ll be coming to talk to
Info Dev later today or tomorrow about this.”
 Bad: “I’m working on the Customer X issue.”
 Good: “Customer X is having a problem where when they run
security checks against their SQL Server 2005 endpoints,
they’re getting data that doesn’t make sense. When I looked in
the XML file for the security check, I realized the check was
coded incorrectly to run only against SQL 2000 endpoints. I’m
fixing the code in the check file so it can run against SQL
2000 or 2005 endpoints.”


Sample Scrum Topics – QE
 Bad: “I’m running test cases.”
 Good: “I’m running test cases for Feature X. I’m about 75%
done with those, but can’t seem to get the modify function to
work, so I’m blocked on those test cases.”
 Bad: “I’m writing test cases.”
 Good: “I’m writing positive and negative test cases for
Feature Y. We need to make sure it works when the correct
parameters are put in, but we should also look for what
happens when we put nonsense characters in for parameter
values. Developer Joe, let’s get together later to talk about
whether there are any restrictions on special characters in the
parameter field.”


Sample Scrum Topics – Information Development
 Bad: “I’m working on the User Guide.”
 Good: “I’m creating a new chapter in the User Guide for
Feature X. I’ve talked with Development and received all the
information I need to complete the draft, but will go back to
them tomorrow for them to take a look at what I wrote to
ensure it’s technically accurate.”
 Bad: “I’m creating the help for Feature X.”
 Good: “I am about done creating the help structure for the
wizard Feature X uses. Developer Sally, I’ll need to get with
you to show you what I did in the mapping file so we can hook
up the help to the wizard page code. I’m also adding these
topics to the .chm file’s table of contents.”


Be Involved
 Show an interest in the requirements, design, and
thought behind the design of the product.
 Attend any and all release planning and iteration
planning meetings.
 Offer to help improve text in the GUI.
− English is second language for many developers.
− It might only take a label change for window to be much more
clear.
 Be a usability advocate.
 Have the writer working on the feature interact with
the developer/QE person working on the feature.
Don’t funnel all information through one person.


Take Ownership of Technical Accuracy
 Don’t assume the product works like the developer
tells you it does.
 Install and maintain your own builds of the product.
− Allows you to better determine if there is a technical or usability
issue in the product.
− Lets floating writers quickly and easily access the product to
reduce amount of time it takes to be effective on the team.
 Gain your team’s trust by having a solid
understanding of the product.
 Make more informed suggestions for change.


Planning the Release



 Do resource planning on an iteration-by-iteration basis.
− Have a manager or coordinating lead look at resources across projects.
− Have iteration planning meetings.
 Create a review schedule appropriate to the project.
− Ensure approval draft comes after Feature Complete.
− Have pieces of documentation reviewed during active Development
iterations.
− Ensure quality edit draft occurs during a hardening iteration.
− Work on doc-specific tasks and bugs in early iterations.
 Ally with product management.
− Support Info Dev in numerous ways.
− Can be a wealth of information about customers and their use of our
products.


Creating User Stories



 What is a user story?
− A software system requirement
− Defines what is to be built
− Prioritized, make up the backlog
− Stories may be related together as “features” or “themes”


Good User Stories – Benefits to Floating Writers
 Independent – Can be worked on without pulling in other stories,
can be scheduled in any order
 Negotiable – Allows flexibility with engineering team, implies it is
understandable (easy to pick up)
 Valuable – Frames stories from customer perspective
 Estimatable – Allows lead/manager to pull floating writers on to
project based on their capacity and estimate of time needed for
story
 Sized appropriately – Lets floating writers focus on smaller
pieces and move on and off project more smoothly
 Testable – Lets floating writers see what the feature is supposed
to do upfront and can write more thorough documentation upfront


User Story Tasks – Benefits to Floating Writers
 Specific – Helps in understanding and prevents overlap, which is
useful when pulling writers on and off projects from iteration to
iteration.
 Measurable – Helps floating writers know when to mark the task
as complete so they can move on to other projects if needed.
 Achievable – Helps determine if task is realistic.
 Relevant – Helps determine if task relates to fulfilling the user
story, thus contributing to the release.
 Time-boxed – Helps floating writers know how much work
remains and whether the task will be done within the iteration.


Examples
 Bad example:
Discovery and registration
Discover and register the supported operating system, applications, web
servers, or database instances monitored by an agent on a Windows
computer.
 Good example:

Good User Story Example.fm


Planning the Iteration


Coping with Multiple Projects and Scrums
 Work with your lead or manager to spread your
workload so you can delegate scrum meeting
attendance to others.
 Attend scrums that pertain to your highest priority
project only.
 Ask the scrum master to send status emails for the
meetings so you know what you missed.
 Ensure you have a presence on your team so your
team doesn’t forget you when you’re not there.


Determining Capacity
 Consider previous iteration estimates.
 Include vacation and non-iteration responsibilities,
such as meetings, customer support, time for
planning, etc. (approximately 25% of each team
member’s time).
 Do not include the first or last day of the iteration.
 Ensure Development finishes early so QE and Info
Dev have time to complete their tasks before the
iteration ends.


Capacity Example
 Meredith is a team member for Project A and
Project B.
 Iteration 1 for Project A is Feb. 7-20.
 Iteration 3 for Project B is Feb. 5-18.
 Project B has a planning day Feb. 15, so Meredith’s
capacity for Feb. 15 on Project A is 0.


Capacity Example


Sizing Documentation Work
 Create more accurate estimates by applying a
standard number of hours per page of doc based
on the level of source material.
 Plug in your tasks based on the information in the
user story to quickly estimate the amount of work
needed to complete your tasks.
 Compare the number of hours required to complete
tasks to total hours of team member capacity.


Sizing Documentation Work - Example


Contact Information


Contact Information

Alyssa Fox
Information Development Manager
NetIQ Corporation
alyssa.fox@netiq.com
713-418-5334
Meredith Kramer
Lead Information Developer
NetIQ Corporation
meredith.kramer@netiq.com
713-418-5400


NetIQ Confidential Information

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