Succeeding with Agile

Written documents decrease whole-team responsibility

One of the goals of shifting to Scrum is to get the whole team working together toward the goal of delivering a great product. We want to strip our development process of bad habits that work against this goal. Written documents create sequential hand-offs, which deprive the team of a unity of purpose. One person (or group) defines the product; another group builds it. Two-way communication is discouraged. Through the written document, one team member is saying, “Here’s what to do,” and others are expected to do it. This type of master-and-servant relationship is unlikely to create strong feelings of engagement on the part of the servants. Rather than feeling responsible for the success of ...