After the Scrum: Twenty Years of Working without Documentation

Agile processes enable software development projects to react to rapid changes in the development environment. However, they are often criticized for not creating and maintaining standard documentation such as requirements and design documentation. The lack of documentation can be detrimental for maintaining knowledge, especially in the long run, because there is no explicit medium for communication to new people and among existing developers. This poses an important question: whether the use of agile processes in long run is feasible. In this paper, we presented a field study of an organization that has been using an agile process for more than 20 years and has been successful in maintaining knowledge over that period. Instead of written documentation, they use living documents, well-connected communication, and working software are prioritized as mediums for maintaining knowledge. However, success is not easily achieved. There are important factors that enable the organization to use the current practices successfully. These factors are: shared values, overlapping knowledge among team members, low turnover rate, and well-understood requirements.