What is 'Just Enough' Documentation in Agile?

What is ‘Just Enough
Documentation’ in Agile?
Presenter: Sally Elatta

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About the Speaker

• Sally Elatta
• Founder of AgileTransformation.com
• Enterprise Process Improvement Coach, Architect, Trainer
• Coached over 18 teams on adopting Agile methods.
• Taught over 600+ students on Agile
• Certified ScrumMaster, Scrum Practitioner, IBM, Sun, and
Microsoft Certifications.
• Sally@AgileTransformation.com
• 402 212-3211

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Copyright(c) Sally Elatta 2009 www.AgileTransformation.com

Session Goals

• Review of our last session
• The Agile view on requirements
• Reviewing what is ‘Just Enough’ for each
Agile phase
• Sample requirements
• Resources

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Traditional Requirements
Characteristics

4

Agile Requirements
Characteristics

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The Agile Lifecycle – Big Picture

During Release Planning
– Breakdown requirements into stories
– Need ‘Just Enough’ Discussions to
breakdown a story
– Build a complete backlog
– Need ‘Just Enough’ Discussions to identify
all stories
– Prioritize based on value and dependency
– ‘Just Enough’ related to priority
– Estimate/Size each story
– ‘Just Enough’ to estimate a story (*)
– Build the Release Plan 7

What is a Story?

• A small piece of Follows these attributes:
requirement that is
‘valuable’ to the Understandable
business. Independent
Negotiable
Story Format: Valuable
“As a <role>, I want Estimatable
Small
to <goal>, so I can Testable
<value>”

Sample Stories

As an Agent I
As an Agent I
want view the
want to enter
‘Current Leads’
new lead
report.
information so I
can track them.
As a BA I want
to define the
existing product
return process so
As the XYZ system I can identify any
I want to receive inefficiencies.
As the EDW
System, I want to new member
have ABC file enrollments each
loaded on a night so I can
schedule. process them.

Sample Use Case Diagram

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The Backlog Hierarchy

Business Domain
Theme/Feature/Epic Feature2

Story1 Story2 Story3

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Non Functional/
Foundational Stories
• Your backlog is not ‘Complete’ without
identifying and planning for non-functional
system stories.
• Typically scheduled for iteration 0 or sprinkled
throughout other iterations.
• Identified by the team (DBA, Security,
Infrastructure, Architect, Developers ..etc)
• Iteration 0 needs to complete ‘Just Enough’
foundation stories for iteration 1 to be
successful.
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Sample Foundation Stories

Develop High
Setup and
Level Service
configure XYZ
Architecture
Test Server
Diagram

Develop High
Level Process
Diagram for the
‘Get a Quote’
Setup ABC process.
Setup and Database.
Configure
LDAP Build Logical
Design Model.

Story Points

• We simply use relative complexity buckets
to size each story.

20+

Smallest Small Medium Med-large Large Very Large EPIC!

How many stories a team gets ‘Done’ each
iteration is their Velocity
Copyright(c) Sally Elatta 2009
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www.AgileTransformation.com

Agile View on Estimates
• Looking for relatively good estimates instead of
precisely accurate ones.
• Done by the team who will actually do the work.
• Updated throughout the project.
• Measure stories in relative complexity points.
• Measure tasks in hours.
• Measure ‘Velocity’ from actual team
performance.
• Estimate in detail near term efforts, plan
higher level for following ones.
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‘Just Enough’ to
Estimate a Story
• Need ‘Just Enough’ discussion to estimate
the story’s complexity.
• Do not need to know detailed business
rules and exact solution implementation
details.
• ‘Just Enough’ is reached when the team
can size the story.
Let’s explore the sample guide
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Sample Release Backlog

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Sample Release Plan

View Sample Release Plan

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During Iteration 0

• ‘Just Enough’ for iteration 0 could
include:
– High level architecture diagrams
– High level business process diagrams
– High level data logical diagrams
– Look and Feel Template
– System straw-man
– What else?
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Sample Business Process
Diagrams

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During Development Iterations

• Now come the details!
• Team must first define what makes a
story ‘Done’
• Then we can decide on what is
‘Just Enough’ to get us there.

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Sample Definition of ‘Done’

• Story Level:
– All unit tests have passed.
– Code review is complete and code is checked
in to source control.
– UI Branding has been applied.
– All acceptance test cases have passed in
the test environment.
– No outstanding bugs exists for this story.

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Sample User Test Cases
“A customer can pay for shopping
cart items using a credit card”
Test with VISA, MasterCard and American Express (pass)
Test with Diner’s Club (fail)
Test with bad and missing 3 digit codes (fail)
Test with expired cards (fail)
Test with a purchase amount over the card limit (fail)

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Sample Business Rules

• 1.1-TC1 ‘Verify that student eligibility rules are
applied correctly during registration’
– TC1-BR1: Students with a ‘hold’ record cannot
register on the site.
– TC1-BR2: Students with outstanding payment from
last semester cannot register.
– TC1-BR3: Student already registered cannot register
again.

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Sample Test Results

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Sample UI Prototypes

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Sample Activity Diagram

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The Wonderful ‘Traceability’
Question
• Here is an Agile traceability matrix:
> 1 - Feature
> 1.1 Story
>1.1 – TC1 Test Cases
> TC1-BR1 Business Rules
>BR1-T001 Test Scenario Results
>Tasks
>Code
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Managing Change

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Tracking Progress

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Summary

• To know what is ‘Just Enough’ you need
to know what your immediate next goal is.
• Agile invests cautiously on detailed
requirements by doing it just-in-time so it
can stay flexible to requirements change.
• ‘Just Enough’ does not equal ‘Not Good
Enough’!
• Agile encourages lightweight easy to
understand and maintain documentation.
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How We Can Help
Training Coaching & Consulting
• Executive and Business • Troubled Project
Overview of Agile/Lean Assessment &
• Real World Agile and Recovery
Scrum team training + • Agile Project Initiation
Project Jump Start and Planning
• Effective Facilitation & • End to End Project
Requirements Gathering Execution
• Servant Leadership • Organizational
• SOA Assessments
• … More! • Process Improvement
Roadmap Execution

This Seminar for YOUR
Company

Contact me if you’re interested
in this seminar for your own
organization. Either in
person or over the web.
It could be FREE if you
qualify 

Resources
• www.AgileModeling.com
• http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays
/agileRequirementsBestPractices.htm

• Questions? Sally@AgileTransformation.com

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What is 'Just Enough' Documentation in Agile?

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