One of the most important things to establish with a document is "Who is it for?"
The Agile Business Coach suggests a zero documentation approach to analysis. The aim should be to have zero documentation as deliverables but rather build the domain knowledge of the team so that they can interact with the business.
I have discussed this approach with a few business analysts. A couple of them suggested that the act of writing the document was a way of them structuring their thoughts to make sure they did not miss anything big and obvious. The document then becomes a persistent store of their knowledge in case they get assked something they cannot remember.
So if your aim is to write the document for yourself to be used as a persistent store, then it might serve a purpose. Do not aim to write them for someone else though or you will end up in a review cycle nightmare.
Posted by chrismatts at June 5, 2004 6:09 PM