Agile methods are not opposed to documentation, only to valueless documentation.

We categorized Agile Documentation as a practice and not as a principle. The reason for this is that the structure presented here is to complex to be a principle. One violated aspect of a principle is that it must not be further reducible. Therefore it needs to be considered a practice.

The whole site is dedicated to the topic of agile documentation. However we consider this practice a valuable tool since it focuses on the three main aspects to get started with. In our view everything else on this site still applies to agile documentation, but the structure described here is simply the starting line for working on documentation with an agile mindset.

Teams need to determine the information needs of the stakeholders and provide the necessary information accordingly.

Therefore the first step for creating a document is the search for a stakeholder. Better yet, stakeholders identify their information need by themselves and ask the team for documentation. So there is at least one stakeholder required to justify the existence or maintenance of a single piece of documentation. This makes sure that at least one stakeholder values the document or knows an audience that values it.

These stakeholders with an information need typically know exactly what they need to know. This way the document can be adjusted to exactly match this need. Create an essential instead of a comprehensive documentation.

Last but not least documentation quickly gets out of sync with reality. Time runs forth and a document needs to be maintained to keep up with the pace of time. Therefore it is wise to wait for creating documents until they are needed. This keeps the maintenance costs low. In order to deliver documents just-in-time, teams need to employ automation and single sourcing to create documents quickly.