Bonn Agile Meetup - December 2014: Documentation

The topic of this year's last meetup was "documentation". As stated in the Agile Manifesto, we value "Working software over comprehensive documentation". So is there any need for documentation in agile projects?

This time we decided not to have a presentation, but a discussion in a relaxed bar atmosphere. We met at "Kulturkneipe" in a culture center in Bonn Beuel, which is usually frequented by cinema goers and theater folks. Nine people showed up, and we split up into two groups to allow everyone to take part more actively in the discussion.

We prepared a Q&A card game based on the book "Dokumentation in agilen Projekten" (Documentation in agile projects) by Andreas Rüping. Each card represented a pattern described in the book, a typical problem with a suggestion how to solve it with proper documentation. Playing the game took about two hours and triggered an interesting exchange of perspectives and ideas.

The obvious answer was, that documentation is not obsolete in agile projects. A lot of participants shared both how they dealt with documentation on a technical level (wikis are very popular, as is the whole Atlassian suite) and on a people level (making sure to have people with skills in technical writing, or having people responsible for documentation).

Here's a short list of links of tools that came up during the discussion

• high quality information about the art of writing documentation: http://docs.writethedocs.org/ 
• Wiki Patterns - Best Practices for wiki use and adoption: https://wiki.base22.com/display/btg/Wiki+Patterns+-+Best+Practices+for+wiki+use+and+adoption
• Free and simple documentation hosting: https://readthedocs.org/
• Generate Word documents from Confluence http://www.viaboxx.de/code/confluence2md/
• Screenshots, Doku generieren und GUI Tooling für HTML apps http://www.viaboxx.de/parcel-machines/the-making-of-an-event-driven-stateless-gui/ 
• Die ältere Variante, für Flash/Flex apps http://www.viaboxx.de/code/automatic-documentation-with-flex-ui-tests/
• Build beautiful APIs - Collaborative design, instant API mock, generated documentation, integrated code samples, debugging and automated testing. http://apiary.io/
• GitBook is a tool for building beautiful books using Git and Markdown. It can generate your book in multiple formats: PDF, ePub, mobi or as a website. http://gitbookio.gitbooks.io/documentation/

Please feel free to add more information or links in the comments!

After the discussion the two groups joined for a retrospective, and we gave away a copy of the book "Dokumentation in agilen Projekten", provided by our sponsor d.punkt. Thanks to our contact Martin Wohlrab at d.punkt!

Please keep an eye on our Twitter channel to get information on the next meetup, or subscribe to the mailing list!

Gestern sehr interessantes #bonn #agile Meetup zum Thema #Dokumentation. Dank an @bonnagile & @sustainablepace, wir haben viel gelernt!
— Data in Transit GmbH (@dataintransit) December 3, 2014

Big thanks to @sustainablepace for yet again providing the @bonnagile meetup with an original and discussion-worthy topic!
— Thomas F. Nicolaisen (@tfnico) December 2, 2014