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Lessons from trying to develop a robust documentation exemplar

Published: 05 October 2009 Publication History

Abstract

Software system documentation has been an integral part of the development process since the first efforts to design and implement large and robust systems. However, the focus of this documentation typically has been limited to the production of discrete artifacts, despite the richness of data and genres that surround it. Efforts to develop a robust documentation exemplar - Della - have not been completely successful, mainly because the provided documentation was largely ignored by many students for simpler but less effective alternate designs. This paper will present, in addition to the lessons learned from the Della project, some insights into the direction software system documentation now should be taking in support of large and long-lived systems.

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cover image ACM Conferences
SIGDOC '09: Proceedings of the 27th ACM international conference on Design of communication
October 2009
328 pages
ISBN:9781605585598
DOI:10.1145/1621995
Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than ACM must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected]

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Publication History

Published: 05 October 2009

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Author Tags

  1. architecture
  2. design
  3. documentation
  4. maintenance
  5. reengineering
  6. representation
  7. requirements
  8. structure
  9. usage

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  • (2023)Can Videos be Used to Communicate Non-functional Requirements? An Early Empirical Investigation2023 IEEE 31st International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE)10.1109/RE57278.2023.00040(305-310)Online publication date: Sep-2023
  • (2021)Climbing out of a software black holeSoftware: Practice and Experience10.1002/spe.297052:2(319-336)Online publication date: 28-Mar-2021
  • (2018)Software Professionals are Not Directors: What Constitutes a Good Video?2018 1st International Workshop on Learning from other Disciplines for Requirements Engineering (D4RE)10.1109/D4RE.2018.00011(18-21)Online publication date: Aug-2018
  • (2018)Software Professionals’ Attitudes Towards Video as a Medium in Requirements EngineeringProduct-Focused Software Process Improvement10.1007/978-3-030-03673-7_11(150-158)Online publication date: 3-Nov-2018
  • (2017)Video as a By-Product of Digital Prototyping: Capturing the Dynamic Aspect of Interaction2017 IEEE 25th International Requirements Engineering Conference Workshops (REW)10.1109/REW.2017.16(118-124)Online publication date: Sep-2017
  • (2016)Supporting Requirements Elicitation by Tool-Supported Video Analysis2016 IEEE 24th International Requirements Engineering Conference (RE)10.1109/RE.2016.10(146-155)Online publication date: Sep-2016
  • (2016)Workshop videos for requirements communicationRequirements Engineering10.1007/s00766-015-0231-521:4(521-552)Online publication date: 1-Nov-2016

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