Working in an agile environment is widely considered to be beneficial to teams, and especially favorable to technical communicators. “Basic” scrum can be a huge help to the way your team works and puts writers more in sync with the rest of the team. Taking it a step further and adopting the whole team approach to development within scrum can further solidify the role of technical communicators on the team, improve teamwork across the board, and increase product and documentation quality. This presentation explains the whole team approach concept, describes the benefits derived from this approach, and shows how this level of teamwork can streamline, focus, and improve your content.

1. Targeted Content and the Agile
Whole Team Approach
Alyssa Fox
@afox98

2. The Old Way of Doing Scrum
Development
QE
ID
• Disparate visions
• Dev estimates
only
• Separate
responsibilities
• Tasks divided
among sprints
Flickr: Michele Massetani
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation. 2 All rights reserved. @afox98

3. Done
vs.
Done Done
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation. 3 All rights reserved. @afox98

4. The New Way of Doing Scrum
• Shared vision
• Dev, QE, and
ID estimates
• Shared
responsibilities
• Tasks for all
areas in same
sprint Flickr: Lawrence Sinclair
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation. 4 All rights reserved. @afox98

5. Not Done
vs.
Done
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6. flickr: freepik.com
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation. 6 All rights reserved. @afox98

7. Targeted Content
Best Practices
• Start with the minimum information a user needs.
• Provide what the user needs to know, not what you know.
• Describe why you would use a feature or perform a task with the
software, and relate that information back to users’ goals.
– User story acceptance criteria helps by defining the user’s goal.
– Keep the overall big picture in mind.
• Add graphics and screenshots where relevant and useful.
• Assume the user has knowledge appropriate for their jobs.
• Let the UI speak for itself; don’t repeat the obvious.
• Content comes first, process comes second.
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation. 7 All rights reserved. @afox98

8. New Role = Higher Quality and More
Targeted Content
• Help define acceptance
criteria.
• Include ID estimates in
planning.
• Perform UI reviews and
usability tests.
• Solicit feedback in sprints.
• Run test cases.
• Participate in backlog
grooming. flickr: victoriabernal
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation. 8 All rights reserved. @afox98

9. Swarming
“It’s better to have 80% of the Flickr: features Lawrence Sinclair
100% done,
instead of having 100% of the features 80% done.”
flickr: kosare
~Oleksi Derkatch
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation. 9 All rights reserved. @afox98

10. Zero Bug Tolerance
Flickr: Lawrence Sinclair
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11. Benefits of Whole Team Approach
• Improves teamwork
• Increases quality
• Reduces lower-value documentation
• Gets UI strings and workflows right the first time
• Allows more time for targeted user assistance
• Improves understanding of users, so improves
Flickr: Lawrence Sinclair
assistance when addressing their pain points
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation. 11 All rights reserved. @afox98

12. References
• Internal NetIQ presentations, Susan Tacker.
• “Are You a Whole Team?” http://www.infoq.com/articles/whole-team
• “Play Soccer, not Football: How to Foster a Whole-Team Approach by
Thinking in Activities Rather than Roles,” Matt Philip.
http://mattphilip.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/play_soccer_not_football-agile-
and-beyond.pdf
• Agile Testing: A Practical Guide for Testers and Agile Teams, Lisa Crispin
and Janet Gregory. (http://www.amazon.com/Agile-Testing-Practical-Guide-
Testers/dp/0321534468/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1391386425&sr=8-
1&keywords=lisa+crispin)
• Innolution Product Owner Training, Kenny Rubin.
http://innolution.com/training/product-owner-training
• “How Swarming Helps Agile Teams to Deliver,” Ben Linders.
http://www.infoq.com/news/2013/02/swarming-agile-teams-deliver
• “The Whole Team Approach to Software Quality,” Ed Spire.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/55047326/WHOLE%20team%20appr
oach%20to%20quality.pptx
• “The Whole Team Approach in Practice,” Lisa Crispin.
http://lisacrispin.com/2011/04/26/the-whole-team-approach-in-practice/
© 2014 NetIQ Corporation. 12 All rights reserved. @afox98