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Soenke Ruempler
May 14, 2013
Programming
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Agile documentation
Soenke Ruempler
May 14, 2013
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Transcript
Agile Documentation PHP Usergroup Hamburg 2013-05-14 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Outdated documentation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"