2. @MeganGilhooly @AnneGrosvenor #LavaCon
A little about us
• Anne Grosvenor
Director of Technical Communications at INVIDI
Certified Scrum Master
agrosvenor@invidi.com
@AnneGrosvenor
• Megan Gilhooly
Director of Information Experience at Ping Identity
Certified Scrum Master
mgilhooly@pingidentity.com
@MeganGilhooly
“Unknown. Husky friends. https://www.petsfotos.com”
3. @MeganGilhooly @AnneGrosvenor #LavaCon
Agenda (with timeboxes, of course)
1. What we learned :: 5min
2. Stuff we tried :: 20min
3. What transfers (well & not) :: 10min
4. Things to think about :: 5min
5. Where we’re headed :: 5min
6. Q&A :: 10min
“Bantholith. (2010) Alarm clock. https://commons.wikimedia.org”
4. @MeganGilhooly @AnneGrosvenor #LavaCon
Who’s using DITA?
Who’s using Scrum?
Who’s using both?
Who’s using both perfectly?
Before we start, a few questions…
“Unknown. Poll. http://thenextwebex.com”
5. @MeganGilhooly @AnneGrosvenor #LavaCon
Agile Manifesto
Individuals and interactions
Working software
Customer collaboration
Responding to change
Processes and tools
Comprehensive documentation
Contract negotiation
Following a plan
“Winnifredxoxo. (2011) Balance scale. https://www.flickr.com”
6. @MeganGilhooly @AnneGrosvenor #LavaCon
Principles that apply most to TechComm
1. Early and continuous delivery
2. Changing requirements
3. Sustainable development
4. Simplicity
5. Reflect and adjust
For more information about Agile principles, see http://agilemanifesto.org/principles.html
“WavebreakmediaMicro. (2011) Fountain pen writing principles. https://us.fotolia.com.”
7. @MeganGilhooly @AnneGrosvenor #LavaCon“Steve Morvay. (2010) Dizionario. https://us.fotolia.com”
Vocabulary
• Agile – development and delivery methodology
• Scrum – process tool, more prescriptive, timeboxes, cross-functional teams
• Kanban – process tool, more adaptable, visualize workflow, limit WIP
• Scrum Master – Scrum team member responsible for evangelizing Scrum
practices and removing impediments
• Product owner (PO) – Scrum team’s key stakeholder who sets the vision
and determines when a user story meets the definition of done
• Sprint – a short cycle (2-3 weeks)
• Thin vertical slice – small scope of work that includes all layers
25. @MeganGilhooly @AnneGrosvenor #LavaCon
As a Zeta integration
engineer,
I want to quickly find HW and
SW requirements for Gecko.
The user story – TechComm perspective, Take 2
40. @MeganGilhooly @AnneGrosvenor #LavaCon
• Content strategist sits on dev scrum team and
assigns work
• Content team becomes publisher
• Handles content cradle to grave
• Curates content whenever possible
• Promotes all teams generating content
• Team becomes consultant to the organization
regarding quality content
Where we’re headed.......
“Unknown. Unknown. http://www. journeyelgin.org”
42. @MeganGilhooly @AnneGrosvenor #LavaCon
Want to know more?
• Contact us!
• Megan Gilhooly, mgilhooly@pingindentity.com
• Anne Grosvenor, agrosvenor@invidi.com
• Tweet with us!
• Megan Gilhooly, @megangilhooly
• Anne Grosvenor, @annegrosvenor
• Check our Scrum guru’s free online scrum master training:
http://scrumtrainingseries.com/
“Unknown. Man with stein. http://www.fotolia.com”
Hinweis der Redaktion
Welcome to Content in an Agile World! We’ll be spending the next hour or so talking about the various ways content fits into Agile and hopefully offering up some tactics that you can use in your own organization whether or not your organization is in or moving to Agile.
A few disclaimers….
We both use DITA, but that’s not a prerequisite.
M
M
These are both com
http://thenextweb.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/1/files/2013/02/Poll.jpgplex methodologies and there’s a lot to think about. We’re here to share our journey.
A
The Agile Manifesto is a sort of value continuum. While the manifesto values the items on the right, it values the items on the left more.[
Example, an org with a fully-realized agile implementation seldom talks about resources, they talk about people.
Working sw over comprehensive doc doesn’t mean no doc. It means that without working sw doc doesn’t really matter, and without doc, sw isn’t really complete. So we create doc that provides value.
But before we knew any of this, Megan and I caught wind that our development organization was investigating a transition to Agile. So we started to graft some elements of Agile and scrum into our TechComm processes. Started a backlog, sprints, daily scrums….
And then we attended ScrumMaster training. We learned from one of the best in the industry, Michael James, AKA MJ, AKA our Scrum guru.
M
Early and continuous delivery - not only do we have sw against which to doc., we also value the concept of delivering smaller chunks
Changing requirements – DITA makes us nimble
Sustainable development - protect the writers, no burn out
Simplicity – we’re not doc’ing the gui. Don’t write what people don’t need
Reflect and adjust – Get docs out the door, get feedback from customers, then make it better
A
www.lastwordonnothing.com
M
Having learned all about Agile, with two Scrum masters on the team, we were ready to go.
M
But any sane person would question our confidence, because simply, there was a lot to sort out
M
So we got to work….
M
We tried to do exactly what the Scrum guru told us to do, but it didn’t work. We were sad.
https://us.fotolia.com/Content/Comp/80634130
M
We decided we’d have to diverge from our guru’s recommendations and people got a little scrappy..
https://us.fotolia.com/Content/Comp/58982186
M
In fact in some cases, some of our ideas led to full-blown brawls (and we’ll tell you more about that later)
I.e., writers on scrum teams, co-located teams
M
So we thought long and hard about all of our options, because we needed to move forward and popular or unpopular, one way or another, we had to adapt.
M
Team make-up
We decided to preserve our content scrum team. This was unpopular. But dev was busy trying to wrap their heads around implementing scrum, so we used that time to strengthen our process and we found that we liked what we had.
So in deciding where the writers sit, there are choices.
Lots of benefits to embedding writers in a dev scrum: early info, relationship building at the risk of losing touch with writers and what’s going on
The alternative is having a separate content scrum team where you gain control over prioritizing content and enforcing standards, but you lose the proximity to dev
http://www.seaburyhall.org/uploaded/photos/Photo_of_the_Day/2013-2014/musical_chairs_1200.jpg
A
Roles/identities
One of the next adaptations we made was to break with the prescription of scrum roles. Scrum says SM and PO should be different people and not managers. This wasn’t practical. MG started as the SM and I started as the PO. Over time as our roles naturally shifted I began to handle more of the scrum master duties ad megan bowed out. That worked well for us and continues to today.
You need to assess the roles and the people involved.
https://muppetmindset.wordpress.com/tag/two-headed-monster/
A
Meetings
Combined sprint planning/review/retrospective/backlog grooming
www.chammashotelaria.com.br
A
Scrum prescribes a 15min daily scrum to discuss what you worked on yesterday, what you’ll work on today, and any impediments.
In content we found that writer often was working on the same thing for multiple days and it became redundant.
We started with daily scrums and have since transitioned to every other day stand-ups. Megan is handling this a bit differently. She meets with her team once a week and for an hour.
A
https://us.fotolia.com/Content/Comp/31721680
A
The demo
http://if55.ru/y1/
A
User stories/PBIs “I’m a user trying to do XYZ”
So let’s try to apply it…
http://kasperspiro.com/2013/06/04/agile-elearning-development-3-best-practices-demos-user-stories-and-backlog/
A
As an operator, I want installation instructions so that…..
http://kasperspiro.com/2013/06/04/agile-elearning-development-3-best-practices-demos-user-stories-and-backlog/
A
We’ve got other options…
A
User stories that target feature development result in natural doc tasks.
A
Here’s another way of looking at the user story from a TechComm perspective.
Say we have a new partner, Zeta, and their integration engineers need to understand the HW SW requirements for Gecko. This user story lends itself well to tasks too.
M
The learning organization
The idea of the scrum team, learning and working together.
Writers aren’t going to become developers. The idea of what the writer gains is a bit off, bc they’re not exactly going to code or QA. And the scrum team suffers a bit too, because they have one body being taken up by a person whose sole responsibilitity is writing.
Developers can write (well enough anyway & they can be trained)
M
Let writers do what they do best. Empower them by giving them their own scrum team
http://www.preloved.co.uk/blog/permalink/672/the-cutest-and-rarest-animals-on-earth.html
M
There typically aren’t enough writers to go around – Writers are a rare commodity
Writers typically sit on more than one scrum team
http://www.elcivics.com/lifeskills/household-chores-1.html
A
http://www.gretapics.com/Nature-1/Competitions/Awarded/i-3qrxttG/A
A
Topics are thin vertical slices
http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/rainbow-layer-cake.html
M
While every scrum team has control over the way they do things and we value flexibility, we want to avoid chaos
http://timgarrattnottingham.co.uk/tag/gridlock/
M
An Info Model provides structure that creates a consistent flow for content
Everyone still has the ability to do what they want to do, but they don’t run into other folks, because they understand the rules of the road
To further the analogy all lanes go the same speed limit
Agile isn’t there to worry about direction. It’s about getting product out the door.
Order imposed by infrastructure
http://www.asceville.org/cw_transit.html
A
Timeboxes
Technical communicators talk too much
http://cromwellhaus.com/2012/01/time-box-a-holistic-view-on-sprints-and-iterations/
M
M
Beware of the role of the functional manager.
Managers and scrum are incongruent b/c teams are self-organizing
In a Content/Publishing scrum, a functional manager may doubles as a Product Owner and a Scrum Master
A
Prioritizing the content backlog is just like the dev backlog
There are some items that won’t get done because they simply are not as important as others….and people need to be okay with that,
And this may be difficult for some folks in the organization to ACCEPT and for some reason content is traditionally held to a different standard than development work.
M
DITA, online content, and Scrum lend themselves to documenting scenarios—get rid of manuals!
You will likely face internal and external resistance and this may be easier said than done, but the idea is that you give them a better alternative (online HTML content)
No matter what products/systems/technologies you are using, there’s some content that overarches all these areas, i.e., system overview content
http://www.missliterati.com/blog/15-pictures-of-puppies-reading
A
In cases where you move your content team to Agile before or regardless of the dev teams moving to scrum, be sure to give SMEs time to get used to reviewing topics without context of book
ileadiserve.wordpress.com
A
Review cycles. Is it enough that your content is reviewed in the dev scrum team? Or do you require additional review cycles?
http://www.columbuspubliclibrary.info/sites/www.columbuspubliclibrary.info/files/images/events/
M
We want to be sure that we’re doing a few things: 1) support the dev org in their development of content and fulfilling their definition of done. 2) bring the focus of the dev teams back to the content team and assess what else needs to be done to support the customer-facing doc.
Cradle to grave includes translation and archiving
While we’re now at different orgs, we share a similar vision for content. We’ll adjust as we need within our own orgs, which is what you’ll need to do too.
