Documenting our decisions

Day 09 Session 02 slot 03

Connect back

Bring your results from Chelcie’s exercises back from memory :)

• Internal house keeping
• External entitites
• Tables, matrices, etc

The stakeholders

• Who are the the stakeholders?
• What are the incentives for each stakeholder?
• Who has the right to decide? Delegate if unclear.

Maintain the collective project memory

• Agree on project lifecycle and sub-task lifecycles (yes, some have other horizons)
• Decide on the single location of your
  • Suggestion simply add it under documentation in your git repository

    project-root-dir/ --|
                 documentation/ --|
                                  static/ (please review for sensitive info)
                                  dynamic/
    

• Tag your documentation with static (should not be changed) and dynamic (should be revised by schedule) to get the documentation in the correct location
• Revise the dynamic documentation according to your intervals
  • Yearly, quarterly, montly, weekly etc
  • What are appropriate intervals for revising priorities?
• Use git or other vcs
• Decide what to do (in advance) if contributors step out
• Decide what happens after the project EOL

Document, document and document

• I do not mean tons and tons of documentation

• But do document every type of decision:

  • Document both positive and negative outcomes
  • Don’t forget to document things that failed the prioritization race or simply did not get into the final roadmap
• Be attractive
  • source resorces and software
    • follow open standards
    • use open licenses
    • indicate good enough
    • models (they are the most valuable assets of any software)
  • coding manuals
    • decisions, limits and possible continuations
  • provide user friendly APIs (no peepholes only)

# * provide manually annotated materials and training materials (decide extent) * lists things to pick up for other parties * already prepped tasks, etc * and yes, it can be you in an off-spring project (so think of your mother)

• Contribute and collaborate
  • See: Be attractive
  • Give credit
  • Be helpful, it pays back!
  • Networks make you stronger
    • Use (student) ambassadors
    • Make it easy to add contributions to portfolio

Exercise 1: What make your resources attractive? (1+5+5 mins)

Exercise 2: What are your top 3 items of things to pick up by other parties? (1+4+8 mins)