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

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.

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".

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。

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