In 2015 I worked on some solutions which were related to financial MI (Management Information) and MA Management Accounts. In both instances the product produced revolutionised the way in which the user community has achieved their business need or outcome.
A recent review of the deliveries produced some very interesting feedback. It was commented that the two projects had very light documentation, that there wasn’t much in the way of audit of what happened (caveat here is that they were referring to documentation audit, not activity audit which tools like TFS produce).
Some might take this as an insult, however, I took this as a compliment. It was recognised that my delivery had produced very little documentation and had been very light on formal governance. A question that I should have asked the review team, which I had failed to think of at the time, was “What artefacts(s) were considered to be missing and what value would it have brought in writing it?”.
Now, I will hold my hand up and I hear by declare that we have had one example of a document that should have been written but wasn’t. Out of a potential fifty+ documents we would potentially have had to have created (or were mandated to create), we produced maybe twenty percent. The one and only issue that manifested itself was related to a deployment process. It has since been resolved.
The feedback was that the product was very strong, that the solution was excellent and quality high but the documentation light. I am more than happy for that feedback. It is the way that Agile should work.