Harnessing the Power of the Agile Team · the Power of the Agile Team Jennifer Skiendzielewski,...

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

2© 2013 Ricoh Americas Corporation. All Rights Reserved.

RICOH products

Introduction


RICOH Production Print

Introduction


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


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


Let’s do Agile!

The journey begins…

© 2013 Ricoh Americas Corporation. All Rights Reserved. 7

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


Don’t let the writing team be marginalized.

Step 1: Get a seat at the table


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


Don’t squander your seat.

Step 2: Get involved


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?


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


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


I’m not sure what the solution is.

Maybe you could just…

Write less?

The meeting


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


I’m not sure what the solution is.

Maybe you could just…

Write less?

The meeting


How about applying some of your technical skill to our processes? Help us be as

efficient as you have become.

The better idea


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


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


Questions?

Thank you.

Harnessing the Power of the Agile Team · the Power of the Agile Team Jennifer Skiendzielewski,...

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