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| Date
Wednesday, November 18, 2009
Program Title
Agile and the Technical Writer
Panel: Bob Clancy, Jim Lidington, Anita Quinn, Christine Marini Sigman Moderator: Howard Katz (hardware/software technical writer and member of the STC Boston Program Committee) Description
Increasingly, as software-development teams adopt Agile methodologies, software technical writers find themselves embedded within those teams. What is it like? What additional skills are needed? Is there such a thing as Agile documentation and if so, how does it differ from non-Agile (or pre-Agile) documentation? Is there something that Agile writers really need to tell their developers? Is there something that Agile developers really need to tell their writers? And last but not least, what is Agile and how does it differ from Waterfall?
STC Boston addresses these issues by presenting a panel drawn from both Documentation and Development. About the Presenters
Bob Clancy is an agile software tester who originally learned these principles as a release engineer and as an software tester embedded withing waterfall development teams. Bob sees flexibility as the major strength among agile teams. Bob believes that software tests enable communication by documenting what the software is expected accomplish before development and what it actually does after features have been implemented. Bob was a technical reviewer for a recent book on acceptance testing (Bridging
the Communication Gap: Agile Acceptance Testing and Specification by Example) by Gojko Adzic.
Jim Lidington has been a technical writer/documentation manager in the Boston area for 25 years and at Gomez, Inc., for the last three of those years. At Gomez, he has worked in software-development methodology and program management—specifically, adapting and introducing a Scrum-based development process, then extending it to include a RUP/OpenUP style umbrella process for managing offshore and other distributed project teams. Jim is a certified ScrumMaster and holds a Pragmatic Marketing certification in Product Management. Anita Quinn has been at Kronos Incorporated in an Agile development environment for three years, first as a technical writer, and now as a Scrum master for writing teams. Christine Marini Sigman is a principal technical writer at Endeca Technologies, currently in its 52nd Scrum iteration. Ms. Sigman has an M.S. in Technical Communications from Northeastern University and has spoken and written on Agile, DITA, and other topics of professional interest. Time
5:45 - 9:00 PM - Dinner meeting
(6:30 - Dinner, 7:30 - Presentation) Location
Cost
Payment received by November 15:
$25 for STC Boston and Northern New England chapter members $15 for full-time registered students* $35 for other STC members and non-members Payment received after November 15 (space permitting): Cancellations must be made by November 15 to receive a refund. For More Information
Contact Cindy Cookson, Accountant
for the Boston Chapter, by email or
phone at 978-409-6112.
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