Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter
August/September 2008
| Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter August/September 2008 |
The August meeting is on Wednesday, August 20, 2008, from 6:00 pm to 8:30 pm at the Elephant & Castle in San Francisco's financial district. For details about the location and instructions for purchasing tickets, visit www.stc-sf.org/stc-meetings.htm.
Two years ago, salesforce.com switched from the traditional "waterfall" software development model to an agile development methodology using Scrum. This has had quite an effect on how technical writers work at salesforce.com, as an agile development methodology requires several product iterations, open collaboration, and adaptability throughout the product release-cycle, whereas traditional software development operates on a strict, linear schedule that usually produces one iteration of a product. Gavin will discuss the challenges and benefits of writing in an agile development environment and share strategies that have helped writers at salesforce.com succeed in producing high-quality documentation in a fast-paced development environment.
Gavin Austin is a Staff Technical Writer at salesforce.com, the worldwide leader in on-demand customer relationship management (CRM) services. Gavin has worked at salesforce.com for the past four years, writing online help, release notes, tip sheets, implementation guides, API development guides, and programming language reference guides. Previously, he has written, edited, and produced technical documentation for Citadon, Borland, IDG Books, and the University of California Santa Barbara.