Harnessing the Power of the Agile Team
Jennifer Skiendzielewski, Ricoh Production Print
CMS/DITA North America Conference
April 2016
Senior Content Strategist, Ricoh Production Print– Content Strategist/Information Architect/Problem Solver
17+ years, same building, different companies– IBM, Ricoh | IBM InfoPrint Solutions, RPPS, Ricoh
Writing team– 8 writers in Boulder, Colorado, 10 in Timisoara, Romania
– Create product documentation for hardware and software products.
About me & my department
Introduction
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RICOH products
Introduction
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RICOH Production Print
Introduction
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Enterprise Print Workflow– Locally installed
Continuous developmentsince 2005
Releases every 6-12 months Development team on two continents
– Developers, testers, and writers in each location
Ricoh ProcessDirector
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Build process took 6 hours Builds occurred once per week Test systems all physical boxes; no virtual machines All installs from physical CD Documentation:
– 3 help systems, 4 books, 11 feature packages from 1500 DITA files
– 700 balloon help entries not in DITA
Release content set early
State of the product late fall 2010:
Ricoh ProcessDirector
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Let’s do Agile!
The journey begins…
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Core team members– Full-time team members who create the product
Specialists– Team members with specific, focused skills
– Might support multiple teams
Extended team members– Others who support the team and have an interest in the product,
but don’t directly work on creating it.
Team roles
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Don’t let the writing team be marginalized.
Step 1: Get a seat at the table
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Core team members– Full-time team members who create the product
Specialists– Team members with specific, focused skills
– Might support multiple teams
Extended team members– Others who support the team and have and interest in the
product, but don’t directly work on creating it.
Team roles
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Don’t squander your seat.
Step 2: Get involved
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Reviewing design proposals in advance and arriving ready to ask questions
Understanding the product and how our customers use it Being ready to explain the impact that changes would
have on documentation Writing user stories, especially related to documentation
and translation Reporting and fixing defects (even verifying them, if other
parts of the team need help) Participating at retrospectives. Looking at processes and
making suggestions for how things can be done better
What does it look like?
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Noting ID effort required in each story during grooming meetings
Tracking ID capacity during sprint planning Defining “complete” from the documentation
perspective Pushing documentation discussions earlier in
the development process
New practices adopted
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Build process took < 2 hours Builds occurred nightly Test systems 90% virtual machines Installs on virtual systems automated Four releases in 2011, four translation cycles
State of the product December 2011:
One Year Checkpoint
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I’m not sure what the solution is.
Maybe you could just…
Write less?
The meeting
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The Information Development processis reducing the amount of function we
can ship in each release.
Management and project management could have chosen to reduce our budget without consultation.
Because we did Steps 1 and 2, we established the right environment for conversation.
This meeting didn’t have to happen.
An Aside
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I’m not sure what the solution is.
Maybe you could just…
Write less?
The meeting
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How about applying some of your technical skill to our processes? Help us be as
efficient as you have become.
The better idea
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Realize when you’re staying in your silo. Mention your struggles at retrospectives. Share your processes. After you make improvements, share them
again.
Share your struggles– people might have solutions!
Step 3: Get out of your own way
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1. Get a seat at the table.2. Get involved.3. Get out of your own way.
Three steps for harnessing the power of the Agile development team:
Summary
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Questions?
Thank you.