projectdoc Toolbox

Describes an information need and use this description as a basis to create and maintain a document.

ID
charter
Suite
Documentation Type
Categories
Tags
Since
5.1

Agile documentation is about to provide information that is really needed. Agile documentation needs to be valuable, essential, and available just-in-time.

Therefore a stakeholder is required to define what is required, to what extend, and at which time.

A charter document starts a documentation session by defining what is required.

Properties

The document type charter provides the following properties:

 

Please note that only information about specific properties is provided here. Common document property used by all document types are documented by Document Properties.

Type

The Charter Type allows to organize charters by type.

Timebox

Define the timebox within to run the session.

Documented Information Type

Define the documented information type of the new document as either document or record.

document
A document is required to be kept up-to-date. Therefore there is an ongoing maintenance cost until the document is deprecated or removed.
record
The record is just an information that is up-to-date at the instance of its creation. It may serve as a source of information that was valid in the past. It is never updated and therefore does not require resources for maintenance. It may be edited if it contains errors or it may be updated if it is deemed useful by the team or stakeholders. But it should never be considered to be accurate without further inquiry of the stakeholders and experts.

Sponsors

Specify a list of stakeholders that are interested in the information and therefore sponsor it.

Experts

List the names of stakeholders who may provide additional information on the area being examined.

Documentation Root

Add a reference to the root of the documentation created based on this charter.

This allows interested stakeholders to navigate to the created documents quickly.

Sections

Description

Document the purpose of this charter. This may contain the whole charter information in a couple of sentences.

Summary

Write a short summary about the result intended for team members and other stakeholders

Mission

State where the exploration is taking place.

Tools

List the tools to employ to run the exploration.

Information

List the information the sponsors are interested in. May state a problem to be solved.

Subordinate Charters

Teams may want to break a larger charter into smaller charters to have several, more focussed sessions. In this case add the additional charters as child pages to this document. Keep in mind that the child relationship indicated that if - for some reason - the parent charter is removed, all children should be removed, too. If this is not the case, better add the charters to the homepage.

Notes

These are internal notes that are usually not exported and only visible to team members with write access.

But this is not a safe place to store sensible information. It is just a convenience for the reader to not be bothered with notes stored here for the authors for later use. The security level is about suppressing the representation by a CSS style. Therefore consider this as a convenience for the reader, not as a security tool.

 

The text of notes sections is also indexed.

References

For a document the references section contains pointers to resources that prove the statements of the document.

Often these proofs are not easily distinguishable from further information. In this case you may want to skip the reference section in favour for the resource list.

 

For further information please refer to References and Resources.

Resources

The resources section provides references to further information to the topic of the document.

This may be information on the internet provided by the resource or information in the team's information systems. Anything the reader of the resource might want to know, may be listed here.

 

For further information please refer to References and Resources.

Resources

Paperwork
Collaborate to create documents for your stakeholders as a team.
Domain Crunching
Collect and maintain information relevant for your team, project, or organization collaboratively.
Changelog Macro
Renders document history information.