Podcast: Technical Writing in Agile Environments -- Interview with Alyssa Fox
Listen here:
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
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Additional Resources
- Mobile and Agile: The Floating Writer's Survival Kit, by Alyssa Fox and Meredeth Kramer
- STC Summit 55th--Mobile and Agile: The Floating Writer's Survival Kit (PowerPoint)
- Alyssa Fox on Twitter
- Alyssa's email: alyssa dot fox at netiq.com
- Virtual Machines – IT Author Podcast
About 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, agent skills, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my AI courses for more on the latest in AI and tech comm. If you're looking for info about documenting APIs, see my API documentation course.
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Finally, I want to note a couple of things. I usually write the first drafts of my posts myself and then use AI to improve accuracy, clarity, and detail in places, so my writing is a mix of human and AI. (Hopefully that's not too off-putting.) Also, the opinions I express on my blog are my own perspectives, not those of my employer.