Software documentation is the most integral part in software development process. As the name suggests, 'Software Documentation' refers to creating documents for particular software. To document any software is not as easy as the name suggest. A software associates with itself 'n' number of documents irrespective of the size of the project. Right from the requirement gathering stage till the final release of the product, documentation process keeps on-going.
Software documentation is a writing content or creating documents which further acts as the strongest medium for communication between the individuals involved in development of the product or software. Moreover, they can be treated as the system information repository. The documentation is also helps management to plan, budget and schedule the project. Along with, it is helpful for end users, who are the actual users of the product. It makes them understand how they can operate as well as administer the product.
There are different types of documentations that may be produced while designing a project in a custom software development organization. It can start up with informal document writing and can continue up to professional level like creation of user manuals, guides etc. One can categorize software documentation into:
1 Process level documentation
2 Product level documentation
Process level documentation: involves recording of processes in form of document. For example: document with reference to planning process, schedule, organizational standards, creating software documentation template associated with different processes.
Product level documentation: It involves documentation of a product that is to be developed like documentation of code, algorithms or manuals for end-users. This can further be of two types:
c) System documentation: It is from the point of view of the people involved in developing of the product like developers or engineers responsible for maintenance of the same. The documents associated in this type of documentation cover the very initial requirement gathering or specification stage and ends up at the final client acceptance or release of the product.
d) User documentation: This is from the point of end users who will be using the product/application or software. As we all know that no one user is same. So, considering this point, software documentation should be done in such a way that it should easily be understandable to all levels of expertise and different level of users. A user document can be listed as
1. Tutorials.
2. List or reference.
3. Thematic.
Now, next is the quality of a document. Please note, 'quality' here means the content of a document. Document quality is very crucial for a writer involved in documentation process. To achieve the good quality document, one has to take care about the document standards. A documentation standard acts as the basis for document quality assurance. We can have process standard as well as standards related to product or software.
Apart from this, writing style matters a lot. Writing is not at all an easy task. A writer should be well versed with different writing styles and should follow the guidelines while writing the content of any document. At the end, we can say that creating a document and structuring it properly, can help user as well as other associated individuals to find information more easily.
Author Resource:
Nick Thomas is the author of this article. He has been writing articles for many software development companies like Q3 technologies. Moreover, he has been actively involved in providing useful content writing material related to Q3 Technologies Jaipur .
For more details, feel free to visit http://www.q3tech.com
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