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Podcast: Technical Writing in Agile Environments -- Interview with Alyssa Fox

by Tom Johnson on Dec 23, 2008
categories: podcasts

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In this podcast, I interview Alyssa Fox, an information development manager at NetIQ, about technical writing in agile environments. Agile environments involve short iterations of product development, such as three to six weeks to complete a release, rather than the longer one to two years of product development before releases.

Writing in an agile environment requires a different authoring methodology. On Alyssa's team, each writer attends scrum meetings for each project and completes the help by the end of each iteration (rather than waiting until the project's end).

Topics in this podcast include:

  • How writing in agile environments differs from writing in traditional waterfall environments
  • Techniques to ensure thorough document review in agile environments
  • Knowing when to attend meetings and when to skip them
  • Properly allocating writers across multiple projects without losing efficiency
  • Why authoring in the agile process results in higher quality documentation

Additional Resources

About Tom Johnson

Tom Johnson

I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.

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