CHAPTER 8 DOCUMENTATION To be even more succinct, the whole gist of Agile documentation can be condensed to these two words: just enough. Write just enough, and no more. Period. Characteristics of Agile Documentation Documentation is communication. Communication may take many forms. With today's technology, communication is more often by electronic means such as e-mail, text messaging, images, charts, and documents than by the traditional Word documents or snail mail of a decade ago. We have instant messaging, web cams, video conferencing, Net Meeting, and Web-Ex as common meeting mediums. Preserve those communications, and we have documentation of our meetings and the information exchanged, perhaps including decisions made. We also have prepared videos, podcasts, hand-drawn diagrams, screenshots, all online instead of printed, and of course the more traditional spreadsheets, tables, and text-on-page documents. Whiteboard contents, sticky notes, a photograph of those sticky notes on a wall--all of these are valid forms of communication that may in fact document some facet of your software project. The information exchanged, how it is communicated, whether it needs to be preserved, and, if so, in what format are unique to each project. I personally consider comments in code, including APEX developer comments (the text that you should be entering in the Comments attribute of your page and region objects), as valid forms of documentation. Code and developer comments are communication of how your code (or your APEX module) works. What better place to communicate what your code is doing than in your code, where the next developer, or yourself, will see it and learn (presuming they read it!). Before planning or producing documentation for your project, consider these factors: · What is the least amount of information that needs to be communicated?