Blueprints for Teamwork on Confluence

Since today Doctypes for Teamwork for Confluence are available on the Atlassian Marketplace. The project for the blueprint add-on has already been released on Bitbucket on December 2017.

The blueprints provided by this add-on are used by teams in need to document their way of working. According to the documentation quadrants these blueprints are used to create documents for the process documentation quadrant 1.

The add-on provides the following blueprints – and their corresponding type doctypes to allow type-specific categorization.

Checklist: Checklists allow to run manual tasks in a defined manner. It guides the user of the checklist through a process and helping to not forget a step.
Pattern: Patterns provide solutions for problems in a given context. Patterns are usefull in multiple areas such as design, architecture, documentation, or process.
Pattern Domain: Patterns are divided into different domains to group patterns.
Project Rule: Project Rules are defined by the team to enhance the collaboration and to define project standards.
Team Process: Document processes defined and used by the team.
Tool: Document tools used by the team. Add information about how to fetch, install and best practices using it.

These new blueprints allow to define how a team decides to work.

IT Service Management

The Team Process doctype is a simpler version of the IT Process doctype that is part of Doctypes for Service Management.

Team members who want to document a sequence of activities for their teams usually find the Team Process doctype much easier to use.

Agile Planning

Complementary the add-on Doctypes for Agile Planning support teams collaborating on their iterations by providing the following doctypes.

Announcement: Announcements are a way to communicate an important piece of information with your team.
Improvement: Improvement proposals help to start the conversation within the team for process improvements.
Iteration: Document an Iteration that may be linked from JIRA. Allows the team to set the goal and add notes relevant to a particular iteration.
Product Backlog: Product Backlogs are means to collect user stories.
Retrospective: Record the discussion of the team about their last iteration.
Review: Plan and run your review meeting.
Review Act: A single act to show on the review. Use this only if you have a lot to show or you want to reference the review results later. Often a simple numerated list is sufficient.
User Story: User Stories document a requirement of a stakeholder with a specific business goal. It also provides an acceptance test. It is a representation of a unit of work.

Creating a collaborative work space, each iteration document is the root of collaboration work. At the end of the iteration information that is especially valuable can be moved or copied to a Topic Space.

Developer Journal

Having a developer journal makes it easier to keep track on one own's work and interesting findings. Keeping this journal information from topic related information makes it easier to take notes. This is due to the fact that a journal contains records, which are not required to be updated. A journal entry is a snapshot on information. Opposite to the record is a document. Readers of a document (or Confluence page) typically expect that the information is up-to-date. Therefore documents need to be updated and therefore increase maintenance costs.

The projectdoc Developer Diaries add-on provides blueprints for this kind of information.

Project Management

If your team is in demand for more project management related blueprints, the Doctypes for Project Management provide these:

Alternative: This documents a possible option for a decision. Choose this document type to describe the alternative for a decision in more detail. This is typically a subpage of a decision document.
Decision: Document a decision for an option. This is useful to state the reasons and the options that have been evaluated. Later other team members will have it easier to understand the decision.
Minutes: Record the action items of a meeting.
Open Issue: Open issues document what the team needs to know to proceed.
Release Note: Document changes provided by a release of a product.

With these blueprints teams are able to document the results of their meetings, keep track of open issues or explain their decisions.

V-Modell XT

For more project management related blueprints the Doctypes for V-Modell XT provide a lot more, albeit currently only in German.

Also see the blog article Blueprints for V-Modell XT on Confluence!

Core Doctypes

The Core Doctypes add-on provides a lot of general blueprints. This include doctypes to document tags, categories, and subjects to categorize documents. There are also doctypes for persons, stakeholders, and organizations to create addess books. Resources and quotes provide doctype to create libraries.

The core doctypes provide space blueprints for a number of use cases.

The following space blueprints are provided by the Core Doctypes.

Address Book: Manage information about people and their roles and interests in a product or project. This space contains information about roles, persons, and organizations.
Configuration Space: Manage commonly used configurations without any subdocuments (besides a homepage for type homepages).
Core Project Space: Create a space to organize information for your agile team. A basic structure with homepages is created, such as for tags, topics, or roles).
Glossary: Manage information about a domain. Add glossary items and associate them with domain information.
Index Space: Collect commonly used information like spaces properties or type documents. You may also include fragments to be used by transclusion or other information that is relevant for all dependent spaces.
Library: Manage information about resources. This includes books, articles, podcasts, as well as information about the authors of these resources.
Topic Space: Create a space to collect and organize information on a topic.
Workspace: Create a space to collaboratively collect information on a specific topic. A workspace does not demand for updating information. It is a place to work with until a goal is reached. Move the result of your research to topic spaces and discard or archive this space.

More Doctypes

Here is an overview over all doctype add-ons that provide blueprints based on the projectdoc Toolbox.

#	Doctypes	Short Description
1	Core Doctypes	Provides a basic set of doctypes to create agile documentation.
2	Doctypes for Software Development	Provides doctypes to create documentation in software development projects. The focus is on documenting the architecture of the product, but it includes templates for other software development documentation requirements as well.
3	projectdoc Add-on for arc42	Provides doctypes to document a system or software architecture based on the arc42 Template.
4	Doctypes for Agile Planning	Provides doctypes to collborate with your team. Run iterations and record discoveries that may be of interest at the end of the iteration or for even later reference. Quick notes are more easily added as records to the team's space than to the official documentation tree. Defer the talk to the documentation architect to the end of the iteration (if the discovery is still of interest).
5	projectdoc Developer Diaries	Provides doctypes to organize the developer's work by the employment of a diary. Take you personal planning and professional records to the next level!
6	Doctypes for Teamwork	Provides doctypes to define the checklists, processes, patterns, tools, and rules your team agrees upon. Writing them down makes them accessible for anyone - especially for new team members. Keep these documents short and to the point!
7	Doctypes for Business Strategy	Mission, vision, strategy for business planning and execution.
8	Doctypes for Service Management	Provides doctypes to document services and systems for IT service management (ITSM).
9	Doctypes for Project Management	Provides doctypes for documenting decisions, risks, open issues, and meeting minutes.
11	Doctypes for App Manuals	Document macros, page blueprints, space blueprints, and components of your Confluence add-on.
12	Doctypes for V-Modell^®XT	Use products (templates) from the V-Modell^®XT in your Confluence wiki as blueprints!

On Document Type there is a list of over 200 doctypes that provide blueprints for Confluence based on the projectdoc Toolbox.

Note that all doctypes are available for free on Bitbucket, most of them are also available on the Atlassian Marketplace.

The projectdoc Toolbox is available on the Atlassian Marketplace. It requires a commercial license.

projectdoc Toolbox

If you want to learn more about the projectdoc Toolbox and how it helps to create good project documentation, please refer to the introduction video!

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In the Online Manual you’ll find additional video material that introduces you in the concepts of the projectdoc Toolbox.

Refer to use cases and show cases for information on how to use the projectdoc Toolbox.