One of the strategies in the Agile methodology is to create documentation as late as possible. Is this actually a good idea?
According to Scott Ambler:
A common agile practice is to defer the creation of all deliverable documentation as late as possible, creating them just before you need to actually deliver them…Fundamentally, this strategy is to wait until the information has stabilized before you capture it in documentation.
The reason for this harks back to one of the “three wastes” of the Toyota Production System – the waste of muda. The goal is to eliminate the time spent on activities the customer will never receive or would be willing to pay for.
However, there may be situations where documenting late results in one or both of the two other forms of waste – muri and mura. Muri means overburden – overloading or making things too difficult for certain teams within the production process (and/or for the customer). Mura means unevenness – which can lead to unnecessary waiting time for certain teams within the production process (and/or, again, for the customer).
If the cost of these wastes is greater than the waste of documenting sections that are abandoned at a later stage, then it may make sense to abandon the idea of “document late”. In order to be able to make this judgement, it is essential Technical Authors measure both the value of the documentation (e.g. the productivity of the user, the number of support calls, the number of times it is used) and the cost of producing it. With this data, Technical Authors can then make a stronger case for modifying this practice within Agile projects.