Working in an Agile Environment:
Out From Under the Waterfall

by James W. Korth, Member, PR committee

Can you as a writer remember the last software development project you were regularly consulted on and made an active member of from the beginning? Can you think of a development project involving daily review of goals? How often have you worked with software developers that were actually responsive to documentation needs from the early stages of the project?

If any of these questions caused you to laugh, cry, or want to know if the party doing the asking had simply lost their mind, then you probably have been stuck under the waterfall too many times in your professional life. You are urged to learn about Agile, a set of software development methodologies that involves early and frequent collaboration with customers and developers, and makes documentation part of the process from the beginning.

Matt Stringfellow and Kathryn Poe were the featured speakers at the September LSC meeting where they presented “Agile 101: What It Is and Why You Care.” Matt is the Director of Engineering and Kathryn is a Documentation Specialist at DataCert, Inc., a leader in legal operations management solutions.

The Agile approach enables regular collaboration with the customer, makes the status of each project transparent to all the stakeholders, and is structured to embrace change. But Agile also demands more discipline, instead of less, and requires flexibility from everyone. Agile relies on a Scrum Master (leader) to break a software development project into relatively small cycles or iterations. Planning is minimal, feedback is more immediate yet risks are also lessened.

All stakeholders are involved including the customer, developer management, and last, yet not least, documentation. The Scrum Master decides on the length and objectives of each iteration or Sprint, as referred to in the Agile world. The Sprint is usually two to four weeks in length and targets an achievable, measurable portion of work to which development, quality assurance, and documentation can all contribute. Daily meetings are held where participants stand throughout the meeting to keep the meetings short. Only direct contributors to the project (sometimes called pigs) can speak while users, customers and managers (the chickens) generally do not speak.

With the Agile approach and the Scrum Master in control, a software development project is easier to manage. Problems are identified sooner, rather than later. Progress is visible, yet so is lack of progress, and that’s a good thing. The Scrum Master also shields the Scrum Team from unnecessary external contact that reduces productivity. Communication is facilitated and risks are reduced because project completion and feedback loops are shorter as stakeholders are always involved.

With Agile, even though the Sprint is short in duration, there is never really an end date, according to Matt. The work cycles roll from one Sprint to the next. Yet a sense of accomplishment occurs every two weeks where everyone can feel a part of the accomplishment. Kathryn expressed relief that no one imposes on a writer how long a task should take. The bulk of the work is spread evenly across a project and not dumped on documentation at the last minute. For the technical communicator working in an Agile development environment, life out from under the waterfall and in the middle of the daily action is far better.