Software owner, developers, software users and customer often need to have additional description of a system. In a perfect world, the system itself should be so innovative to use that no extra user documentation is required. However, there might be a need to understand the system without actually using it. There are often back office teams that are responsible for a system, without be part of the user group.

When software is delivered its most important for the software owner to have proper documentation attached to the system.

Example of various technical documents which needs to be created is:

• Pre-study
• Implementation Plan
• Design docs
• Architecture descriptions
• Integration Plans
• Testing specifications for different levels
• User guides/Online help/references
• System Overview
• Statement of Compliance
• Install guide
• Admin guide
• Release notes
• License model

Client Requirements/Trends

• Customer always expects to find suitable documentation bundled with a product or a service.
• There is often a mixture of audiences for a complex product. Each requires its own documentation

Redstone Offering/Experiences

• While documenting in code, try to use documentation tools that can re-use the programmer’s comments. E.g. use tool like doxygen
• Use images if possible. Images has the advantage that they are often language independent
• Use professional tools like Photoshop, Illustrator to create screenshots
• Create and include UML when addressing documents for a technical audience.
• Redstone has created all types of technical documents for all phases over the years, as well as complete courses and training material

We have huge understanding and respect for Capability Maturity Model (CMM) and CMM levels which many heavily relay on. After over and over again meet companies which work on CMM-5 we can say that information can actually drown you. Always make sure when documenting, that the documenter fully understand the motivation for the comment/document.

Business Value

• Documents on all levels, for various audiences
• A system that is easy to understand and illustrate how to maintain or upgrade in future

By partnering with Redstone you are always assured of:

• Effective doc-tech-resources, used to create sequence diagrams, state diagrams, data models, use-cases, etc but still have the sensitivity to target end-users. We do adopt the language depending on audience