A tale of two writing teams

Our report compares and contrasts the agile experiences of technical writers from two companies. In both cases, the writers had to integrate themselves into medium-sized agile development projects. However, the writing teams differed in their approaches during the necessary transition and integration to the agile methodology. Writers assigned to these agile projects found themselves adapting to new team dynamics in ways that were quite agile, including creative time-slicing, scaling across multiple teams, and finding ways to save time while focusing on business value. We also found that, even though writers can be uncomfortable while adapting the documentation process to conform to agile practices, they can rise to the challenges and assist their product teams in becoming more proficient and efficient in an agile world. For writers to become truly agile, their management must invest in the tools, technologies, and personnel to enable their writers-and overall project team-to succeed