How software engineers deal with decisions in Scrum – An analysis
2021
The Agile Manifesto titled “Working software over comprehensive documentation”. Although the stated principle makes an important point, it should not follow that documentation becomes obsolete. On the contrary, agile software development (ASD) is based on frequent decisions focused on customer benefits. Those decisions guide further development, subsequent maintenance, and software evolution and are made during every stage of the software development cycle. Thus, documenting the most important ones is an important foundation fostering product comprehension, software quality, and customer benefit. Besides, preserving decision knowledge supports refactoring and, thus, diminishing software erosion.
However, all these beneficial properties are opposed by a dismissive attitude among software developers. Documentation is very unpopular among software developers, especially in the ASD community. A common interpretation of the agile manifesto at this point is that good and functional code can fully replace documentation. Among other reasons, this attitude is the reason for the sparse application of structured and systematic documentation of decisions and their rationale.
To shed more light on imponderables, developer’s desires regarding decision documentation, and assess the outlined perception of a lack of decision documentation, this paper reports a survey on decision documentation in Scrum among industry practitioners. The author assesses to what extent the above claims hold by asking industry practitioners about their perceptions and applied practices regarding decision documentation in Scrum. Therefore, the author conducted a large-scale survey in the German and English speaking Scrum community. A few more than 100 software developers were asked what they document, how they document and how they use/share produced documentation.
The findings of this report reveal that there is a wide range of opinions in the agile community. The responses show that a developer’s experience significantly impacts the documentation frequency and the interest in the available documentation. Similarly, the role in which software developers have operated in Scrum plays a significant role in the frequency of documentation and the timing when developers document.
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