Good Docs Describe, Bad Docs Prescribe
9 months ago
- #Documentation
- #Agile
- #Software Development
- The Agile Manifesto prioritizes 'Working software over comprehensive documentation'.
- Modern documentation like ADRs, RFCs, and Alignment Docs can become bureaucratic hurdles, slowing progress and freezing untested assumptions.
- Good documentation describes the current state of software, not future aspirations, and should follow implementation to stay accurate.
- Generated docs, inline code comments, project READMEs, and literate programming are effective because they are anchored to the code and resist drift.
- Agile teams should prioritize working software and adapt documentation as the code evolves, avoiding the pitfalls of prescriptive documentation.