The point of "zero documentation" is to build the knowledge in the minds of the developers and business users rather than focus on creating a document that may well not be used.
Documentation should be created if it is going to be used. It should be created on demand rather than in advance of a request.
Effort should be spent coaching and training developers and users rather than on writing documents.
As an experiment, on my current project I spent 20 minutes explaining how a set of business rules worked to three people on different occasions. I then gave them a 40 page document that was meant to explain the same rules. After four hours each they came back and said that:
1. The document did not clearly explain the rules.
2. They had found a number of errors and omissions in the document.
The document had taken a couple of months to prepare. I had explained the rules in 20 minutes because I had focused on coaching rather than writing a document.
The business coach may have a lot of documentation that they use to remember information but it is for their own persistent store. As such they do not need to spend much time working on it.
Posted by chrismatts at October 29, 2003 1:33 PM