radical revamping of techpubs

[John Hedtke]

XP and Agile are excuses for bad behavior.  "We're manly men who code 
brilliantly; we don't need documentation because our code is perfect 
and if the users don't understand our godlike design, that's their 
problem."  XP and Agile will get code out the door and it may even be 
good code (occasionally), but it ignores the idea that 90% of 
programming is maintenance... and without internal documentation or 
process, you have no history.

I've seen XP happening in a number of companies that are now 
dead.  Think of it as evolution in action.

Yours truly,

John Hedtke
Author/Consultant/Contract Writer
www.hedtke.com <-- website
541-685-5000 (office landline)
541-554-2189 (cell)
john at hedtke.com (primary email)
johnhedtke at aol.com (secondary email)

At 07:46 AM 10/18/2007, Gordon McLean wrote:

> >
> > The movement toward Extreme Programming and Agile Development is a
> > case in point; documentation is considered a waste of valuable
> > developer time, and only needs to be slapped together in minimalist
> > form at the last minute. That is at odds with the "TW perspective"
> > of involvement during the entire development process (which is ONLY
> > appropriate for Waterfall, because everything else changes).
> >
>
>Tosh.
>
>http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/agileModelingXP.htm#Documentation
>
>"Outside your extreme programming project, you will probably need
>documentation: by all means, write it. Inside your project, there is so much
>verbal communication that you may need very little else.  Trust yourselves
>to know the difference."
>
>Ohhh wait, you mean that internal documentation is a waste of time, not
>customer facing (and requested) documentation. Right?
>
>That'll be why, as one of three technical authors working within an XP
>driven development team (and I mean within as in sitting alongside,
>contributing to design discussions, arguing UI points, trying early builds)
>we are struggling to keep up with the (external) documentation requirements.
>
>Gordon
>
>
>
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