An excellent piece at 43 Folders. In one of the comments there’s a link to an article on Writing clearly on deadline which includes some interesting ideas for Agile teams:
Decide early what your minimum story is, the story that answers the basic who, what, when, where questions. This is the story that meets basic levels of journalistic competence and allows you to keep drawing a paycheck next week.
Decide early what your maximum story might be, the story that readers will be talking about at work and in coffee shops the next day. This is the story that your editors and readers will remember, that marks you as a star performer. This story may answer difficult how, why, so-what or how-much questions or it may address the who-what-when-where questions in greater depth. The maximum story will have such enticing elements as setting, plot, characters and dialogue. You are looking for elements might make this story especially memorable.
On deadline, you want to identify immediately the potential sources who could provide the information for the minimum story and get the information from them as quickly as possible. Then you zero right in on the sources who might provide the maximum story. Maybe you can’t get the maximum story on deadline. It might be a second-day story or a Sunday follow-up. But go for it. If you don’t land the maximum story, you’re likely to gather material that will improve on the maximum story.
For Mac users, there’s also a link to this really cute application
Nice. I’ve been suffering with writers block on a final paper and this has reinforced some of the good habits I’ve forgotten.
Not too sure about the Mac application though
Very nice piece of work. It caused me to retrospect on my old style writing habits. You sound very eXtreme.