Agile, Jira tickets, and document planning

[Stuart Conner <stuart2 -at- stuartconner -dot- me -dot- uk>]

I'm in a new job where I need to plan and produce some documentation in an
Agile environment.

 

I have a known number of documents to produce within the next 3 months, with
each sprint being 2 weeks long. The order in which the documents are
produced is not critical.

 

Each document will require the following sequence of activities: (1) A
developer SME either writes an initial draft of the document or conveys that
information to me verbally, (2) I produce a good draft of the document,
gathering further information from the SME as needed, (3) review, further
rework and eventually sign-off. All the usual stuff.

 

The main pain-point is going to be getting developer time to work on the
documentation, as they have code to develop as well. We'll raise a Jira
ticket for each document so the necessary time can be planned into each
sprint.

 

My question relates to the best way to track things in Jira:

 

(1) We could say that for each sprint, the developer and I will work on
documents A, B and C, and we raise Jira tickets for these. But doing this,
developer time will be needed early in the sprint if he/she is to do their
part leaving enough time for me to rework and finish the draft before the
end of the sprint. If the developer gets tied up with other stuff during the
first week of the sprint and can't look at the documentation until the
second week, then I won't have time to complete the documents before the end
of the sprint.

 

(2) We could separate the developer's time on the documents from my time. So
for each sprint, the developer will work on initial drafts for documents A,
B and C, and I work on the drafts the developer produced in the last sprint.
More flexible, more likely to finish the work scheduled for each sprint, but
double the number of Jira tickets to be tracked.

 

(3) We could say that for each sprint, the developer will work on documents
A, B and C, but I will work 'outside' the sprints, being flexible on how I
work on the drafts produced by the developer. I track my progress on the
documents separately. We don't drown in Jira tickets. But to some extent I'm
working outside the Agile team.

 

Anyone been in a similar situation and have any advice on what worked for
them?

 

Thanks,

 

Stuart.

 

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