Software documentation
- 2. Discussion Topics 1. Introduction 2. Documentation Requirements 3. Process and Product Documentation 4. Document Quality 5. Standards 6. Document Preparation 7. Document Storage 8. ConclusionBy:-Gourav Kottawar
- 3. Introduction This paper provides an overview of the Reasons for software documentation Types of software documentation Ways to implement software documentation Processes and “Good Ideas” By:-Gourav Kottawar
- 4. Documentation Requirements General requirements of all software documentation Should provide for communication among team members Should act as an information repository to be used by maintenance engineers Should provide enough information to management to allow them to perform all program management related activities Should describe to users how to operate and administer the system By:-Gourav Kottawar
- 5. Documentation Requirements In all software projects some amount of documentation should be created prior to any code being written Design docs, etc. Documentation should continue after the code has been completed User’s manuals, etc. The two main types of documentation created are Process and Product documents By:-Gourav Kottawar
- 6. Process Documentation Used to record and track the development process Planning documentation Cost, Schedule, Funding tracking Schedules Standards Etc. This documentation is created to allow for successful management of a software productBy:-Gourav Kottawar
- 7. Process Documentation Has a relatively short lifespan Only important to internal development process Except in cases where the customer requires a view into this data Some items, such as papers that describe design decisions should be extracted and moved into the product documentation category when they become implementedBy:-Gourav Kottawar
- 8. Product Documentation Describes the delivered product Must evolve with the development of the software product Two main categories: System Documentation User Documentation By:-Gourav Kottawar
- 9. Product Documentation System Documentation Describes how the system works, but not how to operate it Examples: Requirements Spec Architectural Design Detailed Design Commented Source Code Including output such as JavaDoc Test Plans Including test cases V&V plan and results List of Known BugsBy:-Gourav Kottawar
- 10. Product Documentation User Documentation has two main types End User System Administrator In some cases these are the same people The target audience must be well understood! By:-Gourav Kottawar
- 11. Product Documentation There are five important areas that should be documented for a formal release of a software application These do not necessarily each have to have their own document, but the topics should be covered thoroughly 1. Functional Description of the Software 2. Installation Instructions 3. Introductory Manual 4. Reference Manual 5. System Administrator’s GuideBy:-Gourav Kottawar
- 12. Document Quality Providing thorough and professional documentation is important for any size product development team The problem is that many software professionals lack the writing skills to create professional level documents By:-Gourav Kottawar
- 13. Document Structure All documents for a given product should have a similar structure A good reason for product standards The IEEE Standard for User Documentation lists such a structure It is a superset of what most documents need The authors “best practices” are: 1. Put a cover page on all documents 2. Divide documents into chapters with sections and subsections 3. Add an index if there is lots of reference information 4. Add a glossary to define ambiguous terms By:-Gourav Kottawar
- 14. Standards Standards play an important role in the development, maintenance and usefulness of documentation Standards can act as a basis for quality documentation But are not good enough on their own Usually define high level content and organization There are three types of documentation standards -> By:-Gourav Kottawar
- 15. 1.Process Standards Define the approach that is to be used when creating the documentation Don’t actually define any of the content of the documents Draft Revise Check Peer Reviews By:-Gourav Kottawar
- 16. 2. Product Standards Goal is to have all documents created for a specific product attain a consistent structure and appearance Can be based on organizational or contractually required standards Four main types: 1. Documentation Identification Standards 2. Document Structure Standards 3. Document Presentation Standards 4. Document Update StandardsBy:-Gourav Kottawar
- 17. 2. Product Standards One caveat: Documentation that will be viewed by end users should be created in a way that is best consumed and is most attractive to them Internal development documentation generally does not meet this need By:-Gourav Kottawar
- 18. 3. Interchange Standards Deals with the creation of documents in a format that allows others to effectively use PDF may be good for end users who don’t need to edit Word may be good for text editing Specialized CASE tools need to be considered This is usually not a problem within a single organization, but when sharing data between organizations it can occur This same problem is faced all the time during software integration By:-Gourav Kottawar
- 19. Other Standards IEEE Has a published standard for user documentation Provides a structure and superset of content areas Many organizations probably won’t create documents that completely match the standard Writing Style Ten “best practices” when writing are provided Author proposes that group edits of important documents should occur in a similar fashion to software walkthroughs By:-Gourav Kottawar
- 20. Online Documentation Either internal to the application or Web based Requires rethinking the presentation style since normal “paper” documentation approaches do not carry over well Should act as a supplement to paper documentation Biggest benefit of Web docs are that they are always currentBy:-Gourav Kottawar
- 21. Document Preparation Covers the entire process of creating and formatting a document for publication Author recommends using specialized (and separate) tools for creating and preparing documents This is only important for user documentation It is often important to have a professional writer or document publisher evaluate documents before publication to ensure they look good and will carry over to paper well By:-Gourav Kottawar
- 22. Document Storage Author Recommends (in 2001) File System to store the actual documents Database to store references to the files with metadata to allow searching and referencing Today it is probably better to use a content management systems CVS or Subversion Free and Open Source Easy to setup and maintain By:-Gourav Kottawar
- 23. Conclusion Good overview of documentation Though most documentation “requirements” are based on contract requirements Hard to cover things like that in a paper like this Most of the content seemed to be referring to user documentation Design and other similar docs (often times more graphical than textual) were overlookedBy:-Gourav Kottawar
Editor's Notes
- #19: Mention