Int. J. Advanced Networking and Applications
Volume: 06 Issue: 06 Pages: 2563-2572 (2015) ISSN: 0975-0290
Software Project Documentation - An Essence of
Software Development
Vikas S. Chomal
1
Assistant Professor
2
Research Scholar
1
The Mandvi Education Society Institute of Computer Studies,
Mandvi, Gujarat, India
2
Singhania University, Pacheri Bari, District – Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan
Dr. Jatinderkumar R. Saini
1
Director I/C & Associate Professor
2
Research Supervisor
1
Narmada College of Computer Application,
Bharuch, Gujarat, India
2
Singhania University, Pacheri Bari, District – Jhunjhunu, Rajasthan
-----------------------------------------------------------------ABSTRACT------------------------------------------------------------
Software documentation is a critical attribute of both software projects and software engineering in general.
Documentation is considered as a media of communication among the parties involved during software development as
well the one who will be using the software. It consists of written particulars concerning software specifications as well
as what it does, in which manner it accomplishes the specified details and even how to exercise it. In this paper, we
tried to focus on the role of documentation in software projects.
Keywords: Documentation, Software Engineering, Software Project Documentation, Software Projects
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Date of Submission: March 07, 2015 Date of Acceptance: May 07, 2015
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I. INTRODUCTION
Software documentation is an essential feature of both
software projects and software engineering in common. In
piece of evidence, documentation engineering has become
an accepted sub-domain in the software engineering
society. The task of documentation in a software
engineering milieu is to commune information to its
spectators and instils knowledge of the system it describes
[2][19]. Documentation is requisite in software
development. Even though every software development
project is exclusive and produces diverse categories of
documents, different amount of documentation, and may
employ different documentation methods and notations,
we need to be able to control the documentation produced
in software development projects in a uniform manner
[3][30]. Documentations is the process of collecting,
organizing, storing and maintaining historical record of
programs and other documents used or prepared during the
different phases of the life cycle of the software
[13][14].Software development is partly a learning and
communication process. Software developers need to
communicate with each other and also with various
interest groups of the system to be developed, such as
customers, marketing people, end users, service personnel,
and authorities. Documentation is the basis for
communication in software development organizations as
well as between development organizations and the
interest groups of the system to be developed [28][41].
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
Ambler et al [1] describes the issues concerning the
changing needs of documentation. In particular, Ambler
says that “during development you’re exploring both the
problem and solution spaces, trying to understand what
you need to build and how things work together. Post
development you want to understand what was built, why
it was built that way, and how to operate it”. Cockburn
[18], as well as Ambler et al [1] presents an alternate view
concerning the role of documentation. They argue that the
purpose of documentation is to convey knowledge –
something that can be different from merely providing
information. Cockburn argues that source code presents
the facts of a system and the supporting documents
facilitate higher-level interpretation of those facts. A
document that instils knowledge in its audience can then
be deemed effective, somewhat regardless of its age and
the extent to which it is up-to-date [18].
Laitinen [28] puts forward that software development is
supposed to be documentation-oriented, which means that
documents are considered to be the most essential and
valuable products of the development process.
Documentation-orientedness involves considering such
computer-process able products as source program
modules and batch-files as documents. On the other hand,
a product such as executable machine code is regarded as
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