Succeeding with Agile

Don’t Throw the Baby Out with the Documentation

These weaknesses of written communication are not to say we should abandon written requirements documents—absolutely not. Rather, we should use documents where appropriate. Because the Agile Manifesto says that we favor “working software over comprehensive documentation” (Beck et al. 2001), agile has been misinterpreted as being against documentation. The goal in agile development is to find the right balance between documentation and discussion. In the past we’ve often been skewed way too far toward the side of documents.

We should also remain aware that requirements documents are just one form of documentation that may exist on a project. Other artifacts will exist: Test plans, executable test ...