Pair doc writing

That's write folks! (haha) Just minutes ago I heard through the wall what I've come to recognize as "productivity in action" and I thought it might be valuable to capture and share with you. In this photograph we're witnessing a first hand account of a dev lead, Bob Brumfield (left), a product planner, Glenn Block (center), and a technical writer, Nelly Delgado (right) huddled around a monitor talking about the best way to structure the documentation on Prism. I love seeing this level of teamwork and common purpose.

But what I love about this picture is how it illustrates Nelly's complete mastery of her role as a tech writer (relaxed, in a director capacity, letting someone else do the manual stuff): getting the others to do some writing. Well, I guess she could be manifesting complete and utter frustration at Glenn's incessantly obstinate comportment ... nah. Go Team!

Comments

• Anonymous
  April 30, 2008
  By my calculations, that's not a pair :-)

• Anonymous
  April 30, 2008
  Haha, good point Peter ... it's three of them :)

• Anonymous
  April 30, 2008
  when really he's trying to get them hooked on Twitter :)

• Anonymous
  April 30, 2008
  Don rights (sic) a blog post! Is that it for May now? I guess Don, in your new role, you end up doing a lot of pair managing. I have found in my experience, that large orgs such as yours and mine seem to ensure there are at least two managers for every developer. Saying that, those (at least) two tend not to collaborate, and the teamwork between them is closer to friction... So much for the Developer Abstraction Layer...

• Anonymous
  May 01, 2008
  I've spent the entire week writing three proposals. I words came much faster and meaningful when I was on the phone with a coworker getting help on a point. Writing documents as a pair has been just as successful as writing code as a pair.