This document discusses how technical communicators can make agile development processes work for them. It provides tips for participating effectively in common agile meetings and activities like backlog grooming, sprint planning, daily scrums, demonstrations, and retrospectives. The document emphasizes speaking up in meetings, advocating for users, and adapting agile practices as needed. Technical communicators are encouraged to put effort into agile processes to get value from them and drive continuous improvement.

1. John Garison
Lead Technical Communicator
Medidata Solutions

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Who am I?
 Lead Technical Communicator for very agile software company
 STC Associate Fellow
 Agile veteran since 2001-ish
 I remember using punch cards …
 john@garisons.com
MAKING AGILE WORK FOR YOU 2

3. Who are you?
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What’s your interest in Agile?
 I’m just curious …
 Not now, but it’s coming …
 Currently work in Agile development environment
… and don’t like it
… and do like it

4. What is Agile?
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 What the book says
 What it really is
 What it really isn’t
 What it can be
 And there’s something in
it for writers

5. What’s So Special About Agile?
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 Agile is series of structured discussions among all the
people on a cross-functional product team
 The goal is to make sure that everything is identified,
assessed, and discussed so that the team can deliver quality
products predictably with minimal risk
 The product – not just the code – is continually developed,
tested, and integrated
 The team decides its own metrics
 The team determines its own internal practices
 No two agile implementations are the same – even those
within the same company

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Waterfall methodology
I’ve set the wedding date …
But I haven’t asked her out yet

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Water-Agile-Fall?

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Oh yeah – this looks easy!

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It’s really pretty simple

10. Agile Components, Terms, and
Concepts
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 Epics
 Stories
 Tasks
 Backlog Grooming
 Sprint Planning
 Daily Scrum
 Reveals
 Retrospective
 Fibs
 Chickens and Pigs
 Done done
MAKING AGILE WORK FOR YOU
Attend meetings
Speak up!!
Be the user advocate

11. Make Grooming Work for You
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 The backlog grooming meeting does sprint pre-planning
 Address large issues (epics and stories)
 Determine priorities – what’s more important and why
 Define what, why, and relationships with other stories
 Define scope
 Pre-fibbing / T-shirt sizing
 How do I make grooming meetings work for me?
 Attend the meeting. If not invited, get invited or attend anyway!
 Listen ! Grooming explains WHY things are being done
 Speak up if you have input
 Request follow up meetings if necessary
MAKING AGILE WORK FOR YOU

12. Make Sprint Planning Work for You
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 Each sprint begins with a sprint planning meeting
 Select backlog stories to be completed in the new sprint
 Discuss stories in detail; identify important components and risks
 Fib stories, create and assign tasks … and minimize risk
 The team agrees on work to be completed in the sprint
 How do I make planning meetings work for me?
 Attend the meeting. If not invited, get invited or attend anyway!
 Speak up if you have input
 Request follow up meetings if necessary
 Make sure you have appropriate tasks and cards
MAKING AGILE WORK FOR YOU

13. Making Scrum Work for You
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 Each day begins with a scrum
 Short - 15-minutes max - stand up meeting
 Team members report on what they are doing that day
 Identify dependencies and impediments
 Post-scrum discussions if needed
 How do I make scrums work for me?
 If you can’t get something done, say you are blocked
 If you have a dependency on someone , say you are blocked
 Get cards assigned to others as necessary
 Request follow up meetings as necessary
MAKING AGILE WORK FOR YOU

14. Making Reveals Work for You
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 Reveals happen near the end of a sprint
 Team members demo code and UI developed in the sprint
 Ideally, separate front- and back-end reveals
 How do I make reveals work for me?
 Watch others demo their work – even if it is not final
 Speak up if you have questions; follow up offline as needed
 Be the user advocate during the meeting … and later
 Show what you have done at least once a release
 Present process changes and new deliverables
MAKING AGILE WORK FOR YOU

15. Making Retrospectives Work for You
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 Retrospective meetings happen at the end of each release
 Take the pulse of the team
 Assess and improve team processes
 What to start to make improvements
 What to stop to reduce/eliminate problems
 What to continue that is working well
 How do I make retrospectives work for me?
 Suggest and discuss proposals for change
 Point out what has improved for you or you can improve for others
 Point out what has gotten worse for you, and how to improve it
MAKING AGILE WORK FOR YOU

16. Make your Agile Tools Work for You
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The more information in descriptions, the better for everyone. Your
teams should consider adding components like these:
 Elevator pitch (Epics): 30 second description of a new feature that
explains both the problem and the solution
 Business value: (Stories): What’s in it for the users – internal and
external
 Description: (Stories, tasks, bugs): As much detail as necessary to
explain the problem and how the solution works to solve it. Point
out possible risk areas. Include steps to replicate bugs and how
they were fixed. Indicate the desired result. List non-goals, too
 Open questions: If some things are unknown, or some decisions
not yet made, list them (and move them elsewhere once decided)
MAKING AGILE WORK FOR YOU

17. Documenting Agile applications
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 Write the documentation your actual users need
 Provide it where they can find it
 Minimize content overlap
 When draining a swamp, stay on dry ground
 Write just enough, not too much
 There is an Agile documentation standard: ISO/IEC/IEEE 26515:2011
 Agile is not an excuse to stop documenting
 Documentation is as much a part of the product as the code
 But “Agile calls for less documentation!” – Less design documentation, not less
user documentation
MAKING AGILE WORK FOR YOU

18. Time for a Little Truthiness …
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 It is rare to really have to have ‘ready to ship’ documentation at
the end of every sprint
 Agile works best if it’s supported from the very top of the company
to the bottom … as well as sideways
 Not every agile implementation is successful
 Agile is itself agile - No two agile teams are alike or follow the
same process, even within the same company
 Agile CAN work for you – but sometimes takes time and patience.
It’s kaizen engineering … gradual improvement
 What you get out is directly proportional to what you put in
MAKING AGILE WORK FOR YOU

19. Agile is Agile
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 If agile isn’t working for your product team, change it so that it does
 My teams change/add things to better suit our needs – yours can too!
 Some of our innovations include:
 Post-Scrum – Discussions as needed following daily scrum
 Mini-groom – Short grooming meeting for individual ‘hot’ issues
 Three Amigos – Development, SQA, Product meet to discuss
potential problems
 Melting Pot – Generic story container for small (< 2 hours) tasks
 Add story fields – “Requires end-user documentation”
MAKING AGILE WORK FOR YOU

20. The Path is Not Always Smooth …
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Believe it or not, problems can arise when working in an agile
environment!
 How do I get developers to listen to me?
 How do I deal with multiple teams?
 How do I make time for all those meetings?
 The developers finish their code long before it’s released and go
on to the next when I’m still documenting … how do I keep up?
 Different teams play by different rules … how do I cope?
 Even though I say I’m blocked, they just close my cards and move
on … how do I deal with this?
MAKING AGILE WORK FOR YOU

21. MAKING AGILE WORK FOR YOU John Garison
How do I know if Agile is working?
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Your team is agile when things are constantly getting better.

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Questions?
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Speak up!
 Start practicing this now for your next agile meeting!
 Like STC, what you get out is proportional to what you put in
Feel free to contact me:
 John@garisons.com