Hi Eric:
We adopted Agile practices almost two years ago and we're still working out
best practices (but that will always be an ongoing task), so I can tell you
what I've found so far with documentation in FrameMaker.
Basically, what you've been told about modular documentation is not necessary
for working with an Agile development group. All I've had to do is allow
developers to document their little bit of code development that they achieve
in a sprint (in our case, 2 weeks). We've defined their coding task as "done"
when it's documented, so I get the documentation in incremental pieces as the
sprints go by. I suppose this makes the documentation "modular" in the sense
that they can easily find the place where they need to document things and
there's a minimum of ripple effect, or the ripple effect is obvious (like
cross-references), but I haven't had to break up our documentation. We're still
using a book paradigm.
Working Agile means that a lot of documentation gets reworked over and over
again, but on the bright side, it always reflects the product at the end of the
sprint, so the documentation and the software are always synchronized.
I don't know anything about Polarion, so I've just looked up the website, and
after a few minutes of reading and watching the overview video (so take this
with a grain of salt), it looks like a project and process management tool, but
I don't see why your engineers would want to access FrameMaker's API from it.
Unless you currently do your requirements and specifications documents in
FrameMaker?
Back to what I do know. We are using Atlassian's tool called Jira to help us
manage our workflow in an Agile way. It has an Agile plug-in so that we can
create epics and stories, plan sprints, track velocity, and so on. If all this
is Greek to you, you should read up on Agile practices. There's loads of
information on the internet, so I won't bother sending you links. And every
company has their own implementation of Agile depending on corporate culture,
industry, etc. so even with the reading, you should find out what your
engineers are doing, and make sure they make you part of the team. You should
be sprinting along with them.
What you described as "modular" is really re-usable; that is, the same
information can be re-used in different places. That doesn't have anything to
do with working Agile. Maybe you should find out why they think you'd suddenly
have to start sharing information between manuals.
Fei Min Lorente
Senior Technical Communicator and Business Process Analyst
---------------------------------------------
Message: 1
Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2016 15:52:44 -0800
From: eric_isaac...@selinc.com
To: framers@lists.frameusers.com
Subject: [Framers] "Modularity" and FrameMaker
Message-ID:
<of3273420e.ef747bf2-on88257f40.008053f3-88257f40.00834...@selinc.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
Hi! I'm looking for some guidance for a challenge I was given. My workplace is
wanting to make products using Agile development and by making things more
"modular". I don't know that management knows what this means exactly, but I
have been tasked to see how our product literature can and should fit in with
this idea. The basic idea as I understand it is that we would have bits of
information about a product that could be shared in multiple manuals and
possibly other documents (such as requirement specifications). One engineer
involved mentioned that in order to manage all of the software development, the
company plans to use Polarion (and he asked me about Frame and API
possibilities--I found the Frame Developer Center page and passed that along to
him). I also know that Atlassian tools are also being used (I believe in
regards to the Agile development initiative), but I do not understand how those
two sets of tools are related.
Has anyone had any experience with similar concepts or with the specific tools
as they relate to using FrameMaker? How does structure documentation fit in
with this, if at all? Any pointers to things I can read or consultants to
consult or training I can attend? Anything at all would be helpful. I feel like
I'm on my tip-toes and the water is up to my neck already. I know, I know,
breathe....
Thanks!
Fyi: We're currently using unstructured Frame 12 in Windows 7. We output PDF
for print and the web as our deliverable.
Eric Isaacson
Product Literature Manager
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