Upgrade to Pro
— share decks privately, control downloads, hide ads and more …
Speaker Deck
Features
Speaker Deck
PRO
Sign in
Sign up for free
Search
Search
Agile documentation
Search
Sponsored
·
Ship Features Fearlessly
Turn features on and off without deploys. Used by thousands of Ruby developers.
→
Soenke Ruempler
May 05, 2013
Programming
0
560
Agile documentation
Soenke Ruempler
May 05, 2013
Tweet
Share
More Decks by Soenke Ruempler
See All by Soenke Ruempler
Software migration strategies
s0enke
2
720
Make it SOLID. Software Architecture for System Administrators
s0enke
1
150
Agile documentation
s0enke
1
410
Other Decks in Programming
See All in Programming
Smarter Angular mit Transformers.js & Prompt API
christianliebel
PRO
1
100
モダンOBSプラグイン開発
umireon
0
180
Reactive ❤️ Loom: A Forbidden Love Story
franz1981
2
170
KagglerがMixSeekを触ってみた
morim
0
320
How to stabilize UI tests using XCTest
akkeylab
0
140
Nuxt Server Components
wattanx
0
130
安いハードウェアでVulkan
fadis
1
810
ベクトル検索のフィルタを用いた機械学習モデルとの統合 / python-meetup-fukuoka-06-vector-attr
monochromegane
2
550
Codex CLIのSubagentsによる並列API実装 / Parallel API Implementation with Codex CLI Subagents
takatty
2
500
Rで始めるML・LLM活用入門
wakamatsu_takumu
0
210
Claude Codeログ基盤の構築
giginet
PRO
7
3.7k
AI Assistants for YourAngular Solutions @Angular Graz, March 2026
manfredsteyer
PRO
0
110
Featured
See All Featured
Conquering PDFs: document understanding beyond plain text
inesmontani
PRO
4
2.5k
Bootstrapping a Software Product
garrettdimon
PRO
307
120k
The agentic SEO stack - context over prompts
schlessera
0
720
Pawsitive SEO: Lessons from My Dog (and Many Mistakes) on Thriving as a Consultant in the Age of AI
davidcarrasco
0
93
Practical Tips for Bootstrapping Information Extraction Pipelines
honnibal
25
1.8k
Getting science done with accelerated Python computing platforms
jacobtomlinson
2
150
Deep Space Network (abreviated)
tonyrice
0
96
Code Reviewing Like a Champion
maltzj
528
40k
16th Malabo Montpellier Forum Presentation
akademiya2063
PRO
0
80
What’s in a name? Adding method to the madness
productmarketing
PRO
24
4k
[SF Ruby Conf 2025] Rails X
palkan
2
860
Building Applications with DynamoDB
mza
96
7k
Transcript
Agile Documentation PHP Unconference EU, 2013-05-05 Soenke Ruempler
About me "Chief Trolling Officer" at Jimdo Passionate about the
web, open source, agile software development and knowledge management (and everything combined) Twitter: @s0enke Blog: http://ruempler.eu/
About Jimdo • WYSIWYG Website creator in 12 languages •
currently 8 million registrations • ~150 employees in Offices in Hamburg, San Fransisco, Shanghai, Tokyo
We are hiring!
Agenda - What to expect? • What can be documented
in software engineering and IT operations • Documentation antipatterns • Documentation patterns • Agile documentation to the extreme!
None
Rules • Listen • Ask whenever you want • Think
• Discuss - it's a highly controversial topic!
What can be documented in Software Development and Operations?
Domain knowledge
Requirements knowledge
Code / API Documentation
High level architectural diagrams
Experience reports
Application specific knowledge
Test results
Processes (Not handled in this talk)
Antipatterns
Outdated documentation
Documentation not known / not found / not read
Documentation not written (?)
Too much documentation
Documentation of discussions, not stable states
Wrong focus, does not document intent
WTF???? Intention? Why is it an "extreme geloet"? https://github.com/s0enke/dropr/blob/master/classes/Client/Peer/HttpUpload.php#L101
"Tests are enough documentation" (?)
Documentation for the sake of documentation
We like enterprise conventions for documents!
None
Patterns and Criteria for successful Documentation
Document results, not discussions
http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileDocumentation.htm
Information proximity
http://heather.sh/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Neat-Whiteboard-Diagram.jpg
None
Single sourcing
http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/singleSourceInformation.htm
http://plantuml.sourceforge.net/index.html
http://www.stack.nl/~dimitri/doxygen/
None
<img src="http://yuml.me/diagram/scruffy/class/[Wages]^-[Salaried], [Wages]^-[Contractor]" >
Also document the "why"
In order to <rationale> As a <role> I want <what>
User story!
"In order to ..."
Prefer executable specs over static documentation
None
Value of documentation vs. costs of documentation
Business value low high Total cost of ownership low high
Wikis Executable High level feature / behavior specs (e. g. cucumber) Static documents Unit tests
None
And in the devops world? (Some examples)
rspec for configuration management
puppet-rspec Aha! Rationale! But Why? But Why?
cucumber-nagios
Ecosystem documentaion as code!
Rationale / Business value Executable Specification of the feature
Rationale / Business value Executable Specification of the feature Monitors:
Working Jimdo website, Login, Upload to webserver, Background-Upload to S3, and S3 ;-)
Living documentation
Single source information! \o/
Never outdated! \o/
Fast feedback \o/
Business value, Intention and rationale are clear. \o/
None
?
Links and Literature • My diploma thesis • Scott Ambler
on Agile Documentation • Specification by Example • cucumber-nagios • "Software Engineering Rationale: Wissen über Software erheben und erhalten"