A primer on Agile software development

Until the introduction of Agile, the standard software development life cycle (SDLC) was a Waterfall approach, where each stage of the SDLC had to be completed before the next one could begin. Requirements had to be gathered in great detail. Design would only begin once the requirements were completed. Development began once the design was complete, and testing didn’t start until development was done. This method left those people with a vested interest in the project (stakeholders) wondering what was taking so long. There was nothing tangible to show that any progress had been made.

The basis of working Agile is the Agile manifesto from the founders of Agile: We are uncovering better ways of developing software by doing it and helping others do it. Through this work we have come to value:

• Individuals and interactions over Processes and tools
• Working software over Comprehensive documentation
• Customer collaboration over Contract negotiation
• Responding to change over Following a plan

That is, while there is value in the items on the right, we value the items on the left more.

Let’s just establish right now that “Comprehensive documentation” is referring to planning and tracking documents, not user assistance. The point is that Agile values a product that people can use over writing about what that product is going to be or should be.

The introduction of Agile was a new way of thinking. Instead of detailed requirements, there were user stories. Each story identifies the person associated with the requirement, what the requirement is, and what this functionality will help the person to achieve. For example, purchasing agents need the ability to enter order information online so that it can be sent directly to outside vendors. This may be considered a very large user story, which is referred to as an epic. This epic can be broken into smaller user stories, which will make it easier to provide estimates and will enable work for smaller user stories to be associated with different iterations.

Some examples of smaller user stories that could be associated with this epic would be:

• Purchasing agents must have the ability to enter a vendor’s name, address and telephone number and associate it with a vendor number so that the purchasing agent can use the vendor number when placing future orders.
• Purchasing agents must have the ability to select from a list of standard products when placing an order so that consistent terminology is used and inventory can be tracked more effectively.

Using these user stories, the Agile team assesses and estimates the complexity of the software design and development associated with them. These estimates are in the form of points. The larger the number of points associated with a user story, the more complicated and time-consuming the design and development is believed to be.

Unlike a waterfall SDLC, which is a linear approach, Agile is iterative. Before each iteration, which is called a sprint, the Agile team agrees on the tasks they are going to complete during the sprint. The total points estimated for the completed tasks is referred to as the velocity. The planning for the next sprint should change based on what happened in previous sprints. For example, if the velocity for the previous sprint was 50 and the team had estimated they could complete 75, the team may select less user stories to complete and aim for 50 the next time. After a few sprints, the team and management can get a good picture of the velocity and predicted end date of the project, given the current scope and resources. That’s one of the benefits of Agile. The information learned during one iteration can be applied to the next iteration instead of identifying lessons learned at the end of a project so that they cannot be used until the next project.

A lot more can be said about Agile and Agile tools, but we’re hoping to just establish the background for you to understand the following series of stories. Debbie Kerr, Ursula McCloy and Fei Min Lorente are three people who work in Agile environments. This introduction will be followed by articles where each of them describe how Agile has been implemented at their work places. Although Agile provides a new paradigm for software development, it favours people over processes, making an Agile experience in one company vastly different from the next. 

SPFE: Synthesis, Presentation, Formatting, and Encoding

By Fei Min Lorente

Mark Baker was generous enough to deliver another seminar to the Southwestern Ontario Chapter. He explained why and how to use SPFE (pronounced “spiffy”), which is a fascinating architecture for anyone—professional writers and casual contributors alike—to create individual pages and let the architecture take care of incorporating them into publications. It removes the barrier of a specialized markup language or specialized interface that someone has to learn before putting information directly into a structured and self-organizing format. It’s designed for documentation that will be published on the web.

Why you would want to do this is explained in the other seminars that Mark has presented to us: Every Page is Page One and Information Architecture—Bottom Up*! To summarize, people usually find information by searching first, which means that they won’t necessarily start reading on any particular page (hence, every page is page one). This means that the top-down organization of information is mostly irrelevant. In other words, if you try to organize information in the order you think people are going to read, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Wikipedia is Mark’s favourite example of how information should be organized for maximum usability. Each page is a topic, and all the information on a page is at the same “level”—it doesn’t mix generalities with details. For details, you can click on one of the many links that will explain what you need to know.

For more reasons to look at SPFE more carefully, imagine training your SMEs to do structured authoring, without them having to learn about the publishing system or content management. To them, it will look like they are filling out a form, with field names they can understand so that they know what to write. They will have to think about the rhetorical structure and the annotation of their subjects, but they already know this information, and are simply learning to express it formally. SPFE guides their input while saving you the time of writing everything from scratch. It enables distributed authoring, which means a shorter time to publishing the most up-to-date information.

After all, customers expect accurate and up-to-date information whenever they search for it. This means that the publishing cycle has to be instantaneous. It’s one thing to collect up-to-date information and publish it at the press of a button, it’s another thing to create and maintain all the links, especially if you’re publishing a subset of the documentation. SPFE uses the semantics of the information to create links. For example, if the SME identifies something as a feature, SPFE will go looking for another page about that feature, and automatically link to it. If there isn’t an existing page about that feature, SPFE will point out that you’ve got a gap in your documentation. You can choose whether to add that information or ignore SPFE’s advice at that point.

To help guide your SMEs with their information input, you need to customize the “form” to reflect their area of technical expertise. You might do this now with a customized DTD or schema, or by using a subset of DITA, but it would be an awkward way to do it. If you have ever implemented such a structure, you know that this isn’t an activity that you’d want to do often. SPFE, on the other hand, makes this structural customization easy so that the SMEs don’t have to learn a complex and foreign markup language, while you can harness the power of structured content with metadata. You can reuse SPFE’s existing structures, which are composed of elements, leave out the ones you don’t need, change the ones you want to customize and add new ones. You can also reuse and customize the scripts that validate and automate the linked output.

Yes, there are scripts involved. Working with SPFE is not for the faint of technical heart, but if you know a good programmer, this is the most flexible documentation system available (i.e., it’s not tied to any particular tool). Mark is using oXygen as his editor, Python to manage the build process, XSLT to process the markup, and CSS to format the output for the web; however, since everything is text-based, you can choose any tool or scripting language, as long as you follow SPFE’s general architectural design and design principles. SPFE is open-source, so you are free to use it as you need.

The concepts behind SPFE are well-reasoned, but considering it took Mark three presentations to lead us to this open architecture, it’s hard to condense the information to one blog article. If I’ve piqued your interest, I recommend taking a look at the SPFE pages on the web, starting with http://spfe.info/. Oh, sorry, I’m supposed to let you choose your own first page. 

*For a more complete article about Mark’s Information Architecture—Bottom Up, see Sarah Maddox’s write up.

Making the move into Instructional Design

Are you a technical writer? Do you find yourself looking around wondering how much longer there will be a demand for your skills in the marketplace? Have you seen your department shrink or heard of others disappear entirely, perhaps due to layoffs or outsourcing? Maybe you've started thinking, "I need to expand my skill set so I don't feel as exposed to one industry."

Look no further than instructional design, the development of instructional/training materials and activities. While tech writing still currently has a few opportunities, the future of instructional design is very good, Stephen Van Esch argued in his presentation "Moving Into Instructional Design", presented to our local STC chapter at one of our recent education evenings.

What you need to learn

So what do you need to know for instructional design? It is mastery of design concepts and principles that enables an instructional designer to create positive learning outcomes, says Stephen. He sees two key areas where you should develop your knowledge: instructional design frameworks and learning objectives.

1. Instructional design frameworks

The first step is to familiarize yourself with frameworks such as ADDIE. ADDIE (Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, Evaluate), is an industry-accepted yet customizable instructional design framework. The knowledge of this process framework will help you plan and stay on track when developing training projects.

ADDIE makes sure you've completed all necessary steps and haven't forgotten anything (like evaluation!) Yet, since it's just a framework, ADDIE also provides flexibility and customization of steps, depending on the needs of the project. Finally, ADDIE provides the needed structure for collaboration and review with stakeholders throughout the process with tools such as storyboards, which prevents rework.

2. Learning objectives

Another essential skill is learning how to craft effective learning objectives. Learning objectives are powerful tools and the basis for successful training content. A model like Bloom's Taxonomy, which identifies six levels of learning (Remember, Understand, Apply, Analyze, Evaluate, and Create), helps instructional designers classify learning objectives and best organize content to facilitate learning.

Well-written objectives use targeted verbs for measurable learning objectives, leading to effective training that addresses the actual problem. Additionally, learning objectives help keep you on task, informing your development of training content. Referring back to them ensures that all that's needed (and only what's needed) gets included.

You can tailor learning objectives according to your training audience's needs and context of learning. For example, when developing training for the corporate world, Van Esch recommends focusing only on the three levels of Remember, Apply, and Analyze, since the corporate context tends to have a more compressed learning time and specific demands than traditional education environments.

What you don’t need to learn

You might be asking yourself: “OK great. I know what I need to learn. What else do I need to know before I jump in?” Actually, according to Stephen, it’s what you don’t need to learn that may be to your greatest advantage. As a technical communicator, you already have a lot more to bring to the table than you might realize — a baseline of skills that you can leverage when entering instructional design:

• Communication: You know how to communicate concepts in concise and clear terms. This is your biggest advantage.
• Working with SMEs: You know how to work and collaborate with technical experts and engineers.
• Organizing information: You know how to organize information into logical blocks, determine a logical flow, and help ensure information findability.
• Audience analysis: You understand how to identify and analyze your users and maintain a user-centered perspective.
• Process: Documentation tends to be process-driven (planning, review), so you already know how to bring logic to the process of creating something.

So, as a technical writer you're already ahead! You just need to take the plunge. Once you're familiar with the frameworks and principles of instructional design (such as ADDIE, Bloom's taxonomy, and learning objectives), you can expand your existing writing skills to encompass this new field. You'll be equipped to produce training that truly hits the target, helping your learners improve their performance and get the job done.

By Bea H.

Information Architecture -- Bottom Up!

By Greg Campbell

Mark Baker's presentation in March, Every Page is Page One, introduced the concept of bottom-up information architecture and provided useful design strategies for bringing tech comm to the web.  But one presentation was not enough, so we had him back again on November 26! Baker provided a more detailed analysis on the issues that plague top-down hierarchical structures, and how the user experience of search & hyperlinking should shape the organization of web-based information.

It is no secret that we use the search function and links to find information on the Internet. The search function is the most popular channel we use to reach content we desire and it is exactly what Baker’s topic-based approach builds upon. Understanding that people use the search function is his logical first step in shaping how technical communication is experienced on the web.

To show that current methods could be better, Baker used old and new encyclopaedias to illustrate the value of topic-based organization.

The title of the image to the right is translated as “figurative system of human knowledge" and is commonly known as the tree of Diderot and d’Alembert. It is suppose to represent the structure of knowledge itself. To find information in here is to follow a sequential order through a family tree of information.

The tree of Diderot and d’Alembert is an example of hierarchical structures and illustrates the top-down approach to information architecture. The common denominator of the top-down approach is the linear sequencing of information.

When a Top-down organization is ported to the web, Baker says to reorganize it with a bottom-up structure. If one does not reorganize the hierarchical structure, users will need to read prerequisite information to understand the information that brought them to the page in the first place. There cannot be context if your document has 210 pages and Google drops the user in at page 78. The user will need to start reading previous pages to situate the info on page 78. Becoming aware that top-down hierarchical structures on the web is not compatible with the way we use the web, is one of the takeaways of Baker’s presentation.

To bring technical information to the web, Baker advocates a reorganization of the information into stand-alone topics. He used a typical Wikipedia page. When users look for technical information, they find it embedded in proper context without having to read previous pages. With the bottom up architecture, the context is always there because every page is the first page. At least with a bottom up architecture, the user will always land on a page that provides context and links to get you to the information you want.

The comparison between encyclopaedias organized by hierarchies and encyclopaedias organized like Wikipedia shows the value of bottom up architecture for the web. The information does not stop here - there is more to come on this topic. Baker has another presentation in the New Year that builds on information architecture bottom-up.

Stayed tuned.

Online File Sharing: A Technical Writer’s Perspective on Hash Checking and Encryption

By Anuradha Satish

As technical communicators, many of us use the Internet to share our work files. SharePoint, Dropbox and Google Docs are among the most common platforms we use to share work.

Recently I came upon a blog article* about Dropbox disrupting the sharing of a document. They alleged copyright infringement based on the DMCA without even looking into the contents of the file. The article described how Dropbox evaluates the legal accuracy or legitimacy of files based on hash algorithms. When a document’s hash code matches one of Dropbox’s blacklisted documents Dropbox can prevent the file from being shared without having to know what it actually contained.

The good news here is that Dropbox is not snooping into our shared files! However, an incident like this makes me wonder how accurate the hash checker is and how safe our documents are when shared online. Let’s take a closer look at what a hash code is and how it operates.

A hash code can be interpreted as a “fingerprint” – it is a unique alpha-numeric code assigned to every document stored in any cloud-shared folder. Here’s a simplified example to show how it works:

• Document A containing 1,2,3,4 could have a hash code assigned as ar59i3nd
• Document B containing 2,1,4,3 could have a hash code assigned as b3nj98he

Each document’s hash code serves as a unique identifier. Storage centers, such as Dropbox, use this hash code to identify the correct document. If the document is altered in any way, the hash code changes. Two versions of the same document will always have two separate hash codes. But if the document matches another document, word-to-word, it will have the same hash code.

Storage centers use hash checkers to validate data. In the case of that article that prompted this blog entry, hash checkers allowed Dropbox to prevent the sharing of a file because its hash code matched that of a black-listed document.

What are the direct implications of this to technical communication?

First, the technical communication industry itself is moving towards online and remote work. Many technical communicators, including writers, illustrators, trainers or editors, have worked or will work for remote clients and share files online. This makes our work easily prone to cyber duplication and plagiarism. It is important to be aware of this potential risk when sharing files.

Second, file encryption is becoming extremely important as more data is transmitted online. Cloud storage service providers can provide a basic level of encryption to ensure data security but, by offering this service, the provider then has the ability to access that content at any time. Instead of leaving it up to the online storage providers, we can take control of the encryption process before sharing documents online. Many free encryption tools offer online encryption services.

Third, be aware and alert once your document is shared online. If you think you have shared potentially confidential information, run a search on popular search engines. If you ever come across web pages that have copied content from your work, or contain similar enough content to make you suspect plagiarism, then you can file a DMCA* complaint with the search engine. The law requires the search engine to prohibit displaying the copyrighted content again. It is a cumbersome manual check but it will ensure that you catch the slightly-different versions of your document which is something that a hash checker will miss.

** Be aware of our laws:

• The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is a United States law against copyright infringement that implements two 1996 treaties of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). It criminalizes production and dissemination of technology, devices, or services intended to circumvent measures (commonly known as digital rights management or DRM) that control access to copyrighted works. It also criminalizes the act of circumventing an access control, whether or not there is actual infringement of copyright itself. In addition, the DMCA heightens the penalties for copyright infringement on the Internet.
• In Canada, currently it is legal to download any copyrighted file as long as it is for noncommercial use, but it is illegal to distribute the copyrighted files (e.g. by uploading them to a P2P network). Canadian law makers are proposing Bill C-61, an Act to amend the Copyright Act – a controversial Bill that is similar to the American DMCA.

* Original Blog Article
**Source: http://en.wikipedia.org

Making Every Page Page One

By Kourtney Short, STC Member

The ideas that Mark Baker shared in his Every Page is Page One presentation on February 13 are at once practical and exciting. He brings together ideas from usability, e-commerce, computer science, psychology, and his own extensive experience as a technical writer to suggest a better way to structure topics and documents.

When I write, I carefully sequence books and online help so that each topic builds on the last. When I use software, cook, renovate, or do almost any other task you can think of, I google until I can get what I want to done. Finding EPPO topics in my search results would certainly encourage me to look to the official documentation more often.

It’s never easy to convince a documentation team or organization to restructure its documents. Mark Baker’s presentation gave lots of reasons why it’s worth the effort. I liked that he didn’t gloss over the difficulties of bringing about the change on tight deadlines and in resistant organizations. (And reading his book gave me even more ideas.)

I look forward to writing some Every Page is Page One topics of my own.

You can see the slides from a presentation similar to the one that Mark Baker gave on February 13 on Slideshare.


About the author
Mark Baker is a Content Strategist and Structured Writing expert, and author of Every Page is Page One: Topic-based Writing for Technical Communication and the Web.

Linear Versus Agile Documentation Lifecycles & Best Practices

By Anuradha Satish

As a technical documentation specialist, I have created documents for a variety of business purposes – procedure writing, requirements and specifications for system enhancements, training and development, use and test cases, release notes, white papers, and so on.

In my experience, every documentation project needs a customized workflow, depending on time, budget, and team constraints. In general, project workflows can be classified into one of two types: the Linear and Agile models.

Linear Model

Traditional linear workflows tend to include processes that follow what is commonly known as the ADDIE principle:

• (A) Analysis – Preliminary discussion and deciding the project scope
• (D) Design – Preparing a detailed documentation plan
• (D) Development – Devising the template, style guide, and keywords
• (I) Implementation – Producing content
• (E) Evaluation – Review and approval

The following flowchart is an overview of a linear documentation workflow:

(Click to enlarge the image)

While the time-tested ADDIE methodology has many clear advantages, it has one distinct weakness: the potential for last-minute ugly surprises.

For example, if limitations of the documentation plan or template are discovered during the Implementation phase, the content creator is left with little choice but to go back and pretty much start over from scratch. The Review phase only begins after the entire content is produced, which requires the reviewer/approver to allocate a large chunk of time and effort to go through the entire document at one go. If the reviewer is not satisfied with the product, the entire process has to be repeated to identify the problem areas.

Agile Model

The limitations of a linear model can be overcome using an agile approach, where development occurs in phases after periodic review and feedback. It is an iterative process and the document is constantly evolving.

Many product development lifecycles have switched to an agile methodology. Modern software applications are often created using this iterative process where the client is equally responsible for providing effective and timely feedback to ensure that the end result is user-friendly and meets business objectives.

When product documentation follows an agile life cycle, it could result in effective communication that is churned out in a regular and timely manner.

A high-level process workflow in an agile environment would look something like this:

(Click to enlarge the image)

As the flowchart illustrates, more versions of a single document are created as compared to an ADDIE approach. The agile method ensures that new product functionality is documented and updated over time. Assessment and feedback are on-going processes, so it eliminates the need to review all content at once and ensures a thorough check.

However, if content producers jump into the writing stage expecting the best results to come only from review or client feedback, there are bound to be more iterations and document versions, thereby increasing time and cost for the company. With no tangible target to achieve, edits and revisions can simply go on and on, delaying SLAs and project completion dates.

Best Practices – A Hybrid Approach

Neither the ADDIE model nor the agile workflow on their own can be ideal in all situations. Analyzing the business need will drive the most suitable methodology. Consider two crucial questions when deciding on the workflow method:

1. Is the company prepared to invest money, time, effort, and resources on revisions?
2. Can the deadline be stretched?

The nature of the document or product could also point at the best-suited development method.

For example, when developing a new document from scratch, following an agile method allows the product to evolve as required over time. But when the end product is an update to an existing version, the linear method is more suitable as the proof of concept is ready to guide Implementation and Review phases.

Applying one critical stage of an ADDIE approach to any agile environment can make the latter as accurate and flawless as practically possible: Pre-development planning. A comprehensive document plan detailing possible topics, reviewers, approvers and target dates can help speed up the documentation process and result in fewer revisions.

A pre-planned agile workflow can bring out the best of both models as follows:

(Click to enlarge the image)