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Software documentation is an integral part of the software development process. However, the process is often challenging because over the course of a software development project the scope can often change and evolve several times with updates and new builds. Despite the challenges that are presented in effectively documenting the development process, the documentation that is produced can serve as a valuable asset that can be used in future projects or future alterations of the current software package. Not only is it important to accurately and clearly document many of the development steps but it is also important to make sure the right people have access and knowledge of the documentation that has been created. Even if the documentation was produced accurately and clearly it is not of much value if it is not accessible or utilized later. This analysis will cover some of the challenges that are present in this process as well as some of the best practices and new developments that can facilitate effective documentation.
Challenges in Documentation
One of the challenges in documenting the software development process stems from the fact that software engineers are generally more concerned with the project and the requirements than the documentation process. This is a reasonable perspective given the fact that the project members are focused making the project a...
Therefore the focus is generally on software-engineering related activities and the documentation process is generally an afterthought. Many software engineers find the documentation process as something of a waste of time and relatively meaningless.
Furthermore, another challenge is that software engineers generally receive little training in the documentation process. Generally in schools the course of study is focused on the software engineering skills and again the documentation process is more of an afterthought that receives little attention. Although schools may state the importance of properly documenting a development project, there is generally relatively little time and attention devoted to learning effective documentation skills. In fact, it is commonly the case that the documentation is only produced after the software development project is already completed.
The negligence of the documentation process can be verified by several research studies. One study found that over the course of twenty years of software evolutions in an industrial setting at a nuclear power plant that there were virtually no documented modifications to the source code (Pawlik, et al., 2012). Another study found that professional end-user developers did not voluntarily produce documentation for any modification and only…
Works Cited
Pawlik, A., Segal, J. & Petre, M., 2012. Documentation Practices in Scientific Software Development. CHASE, Volume 2012 5th InternationalWorkshop on Co-operative and Human Aspects of Software Engineering, pp. 113-119.
Rettich, K., 2011. Using the Wiki to Deliver Paperless Software Documentation. IPCC, Volume Professional Communication Conference (IPCC), 2011 IEEE International, pp. 1-8.
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