uScrum (uncertainty Scrum) is an agile process developed by a small team at Altitude Software to manage the process of gathering information and writing documentation.

uScrum proposes different practices to estimate tasks, depending on their difficulty as defined by an order of ignorance. Understanding the difficulty of tasks has allowed the team to effectively prioritize regular work together with difficult creative work.

uScrum overbooks writers on iterative cycles called sprints, then lets the writers micro-manage their tasks to overcome obstacles. After each sprint the team decides what to publish and whether to proceed with unfinished work. uScrum manages uncertainty and the unknown, allowing writers to quickly react to changing conditions.

Presented at SIGDOC’08, September 22–24, 2008, Lisbon, Portugal.
ISBN 978-1-60558-083-8/08/0009

Attachments

Agile Documentation with uScrum

Paper published on the proceedings of SIGDOC’08, ISBN 978-1-60558-083-8/08/0009.
Original at http://doi.acm.org/10.1145/1456536.1456596

A2 poster

A2 poster presented at SIGDOC’08.

Agile Documentation with uScrum (full paper)

6-page paper submitted to the conference in May 2008.