Sometimes I write a lot of explanatory and other documentation, mainly because it helps ME distil and understand what I& #39;m doing. This docco may or may not help anyone else, but the fact it helped me makes it valuable. 1/

How does this sit with "we value working software over comprehensive documentation?" If I am building a software product, I would never make documentation a bottleneck. I would write just enough such that my team and I know what we& #39;re doing, & could hand over to another team. 2/

So what am I getting at? The manifesto authors were talking about documentation /milestones/, not in general. They value a working product over an FRD. It& #39;s important to embrace rather than demonise documentation. Even if it& #39;s not useful to you, it might be to someone else. 3/

It might have helped them work through a problem and/or solution, figure out what& #39;s important and not, what the options are. Celebrate the docco process. Delete stuff that no one has read in years, and don& #39;t undermine the process and the craft of expression through writing.