Agile Documentation: A Pattern Guide to Producing Lightweight Documents for Software Projects 1st Edition

As a tech communicator with long experience in various engineering environments, I am enthused about the concepts espoused here. We need to write "documentation" the way we like to read "documentation"; it needs to have the content needed particularly by us, in the style we need, and concise and to the point when our need begs for that. We need to look toward long term relevance and up-to-dateness - of all technical information, especially technical reference information, and it is more likely to be so if it is concise and focused to start with. We are all scanners, doing stuff or acquiring information in a hurry, doing tasks in a hurry. Another book told about how a new guy on a project was given a thick document about the project. Two days later, he had a headache; couldn't get the picture. If he were given an agile-ly written doc, he would have gotten the picture. Ginny Redish (Letting Go of the Words) is another great one along the same thinking.ONE distractor: He wrote the book with a bit of his own fluff. Maybe to give the book a slight bit of thickness. Could have been more to the point. An engineer I used to work with used to say "paid by the pound".

Great resource, but a bit over my head - why is it so complicated?

Ruping did a good job of covering the topic of software documentation, albeit somewhat generically, i.e. not that specific to software development. He quotes a lot of others in his book and identifies that the goal (of agile documenting) is 'light-weight but sufficient'. If you're working on developing a system for documenting software development (or really any other technical project) this would make a good reference, but start at the back of the book. He uses patterns in his book as his technique to cover the topic. They are recognized problems and solutions, and he lists all of them in the back of the book in thumbnail form. The middle of the book provides the elaboration. The first part of the book is his professional history (sorry Ruping, but not that interesting), and his how-to-use-the-book section.The problem I had with the book is that I didn't see anything new and innovating. I didn't have an `ah-ha' moment where I finally understood the real principles behind 'agile' documentation. I didn't find this book 'agile' at all. I also did not agree with all of his solutions, most seemed cliché. But again, if you're looking for a reference on the topic of technical documentation - this is not bad.

If you are following an agile methodology to develop applications, then this is the book for you. As we all know, by nature, developers are not documenters. This book provides instructions and guidelines for getting away with the minimum amount of documentation needed to support the development effort. I would recommend this book to any developer who needs a guide to documenting what s/he has done during the process of developing an application.

The author misleads the audience with his title, "Agile Documentation." There is nothing about Agile methodology in the book, rather a way to produce "Lightweight Documents." It is conceivable that "Lightweight Documents" could be appropriate deliverables for products using Agile development, but he does not lay that foundation.

This book about Agile Documentation turned out to be very useful, and is a kind of book I have been looking for. A lot of the same issues and conclusions regarding Software documentation we have discussed in our own Company are discussed in this book, and the advices from the author is very good. Written in a style that makes it easy and fast to read.Everyone working with documentation in the software business should read this book!

As a professional technical writer I was hoping to find insights on how to do my job in an Agile development environment, as my experience is in the slower-moving "waterfall" types of development. The book clearly says early on, but you couldn't tell from the description online, that it's really more about the design documentation that the development and test people will need to use among themselves. I wish I'd had a chance to borrow and skim for 10 minutes, I would have saved my money.Given what it is, it's a good primer for developers to use for specs and so on. If those are well-done, the end-user docs are much easier to craft, so I'd recommend it to the intended audience.

I was a bit disappointed with the book since our team has struggled with documentation. The general consensus was that this book was OK but did not really clear a whole lot things up for us.

I would give the content 5 stars, but the print was very poor.The book, however, is still relevant. The information is well presented and actionable.

This book gives "patterns" for how to make good decisions about documentation. Given that it starts with a quote from the Agile Manifesto insulting documentation, it responds well and argues a good case for an appropriate level of documentation.It is focused on software projects, and about the issues an intelligent engineer-author should bear in mind. I found it had only a limited amount about several topics such as management of the work, or examples of typical pieces with expected headings.It is very easy to read, because of the problem/solution style of writing, combined with the author's clear style. I think that a good engineer would be happy to interpret it for their needs, but it does not offer an "off the shelf" solution by itself.Definitely worth reading because every point it makes is good, but get some other sources too.

内容は様々なドキュメント作成に関する要請を分析し、パターン化し、幾つかのプロジェクトでの例を挙げたもの。見た目がわかりやすいドキュメントを学ぶには良いかもしれないが、ドキュメントを作成する能力が上がるとはあまり思えない。特にどういった作業が負担になっている場合が多いといった指摘や、ここは落としてはいけないポイントであるといった議論が少なすぎる。アジャイルの目指す「軽量かつ十分」を判断するためのガイドにならないと思う。個人的には疑問を感じる本。