• Even in a Scrum-team, appoint a person responsible for documentation. We like to call her/him the “The Docu-Gardener”, who’s tasks shall be:
    1. care for the adequate form and content and
    2. proactively search for unnecessary or outdated parts and remove them. Please note: care does not mean your gardener shall create all content by her- or himself, but identify appropriate producers within the team or among associated stakeholders.

  • Document economically (“Less is often more”): We really believe that documentation can be helpful and ease development work - but only in an extend and degree appropriate for the system and its stakeholders.

  • Clarify appropriateness and needs through early feedback: The type of your documentation should be appropriate with respect to the system, the affected people, domain, risks, criticality, effort/cost and possibly even other factors.

  • Focus on explanation and rationale, not only facts: Most facts about a software system can be found in its source code - but not their explanation, reasoning and rationale.

  • Rate requirements higher than principles.