Technical Documentations

Question

Hi Am looking for different Technical Documentations template or format. I think those working with IT companies having a standard document. Can anyone share a format of Technical Documentations will be helpful.. Edit: I don't know how the thread got saved under this category. I selected category General.

Sam Hobbs · Answer

I hope your efforts are appreciated by Quality Assurance or at least management. I think I would do that too. There are many graphical formats for documenting programs. (One of the oldest is flowcharts.) I think graphical formats are good when someone is unable to write narrative (text) documentation. In my opinion the best documentation is mostly textual not graphical when that is possible.

Sam Hobbs · Answer

I agree that requirements should be written in non-technical terms that the user understands. There are two good reasons for that; first the user should understand it and participate in its development and second the requirements should not have any solutions of how to do something unless there is a true requirement such as an organization's requirements to use Windows. Developers often say things like we need a spreadsheet to .... but wait; a spreadsheet might not satisfy the requirements the best. Okay so that is off-topic; sorry. I assume everyone knows that Microsoft's XML comments are intended to allow automatic extraction of documentation so they can be formatted into programming specifications. See Use C# to write comments and documentation . In my opinion however the ideal would be to do the reverse; to write specifications that are converted to comments that get converted to code.

Suthish Nair · Answer

The problem is that i had couple of old projects which was build by other team members and not at all documented. Am in a situation to read learn the code and see what its all about. So i thinking of documenting those in a separate file so it will helpful to others also.

Mahesh Chand · Answer

Ahh sorry Sam! I guess I misunderstood Suthish's question too. So I build all the documents. Here is what I call them: 1. Requirement Document (Software Requirement Specification or SRS). This mostly include what client wants in plain English but very detailed. 2. Design Document (architecture of a software + Overview Desin) 3. Detailed Design Documentation (Detailed design document). Fact is no body really writes a separate documentation for code. But Code should be documented well. This document should talk about various modules UML diagrams flow charts Data flow diagrams. UML diagrams will show you all entities (classes) and their members. 4. Test Document (Contains many test cases originally taken from detailed requirements) So what document are you looking for? I always wanted to to build a Product that will build all documents for you. Wouldn't that be nice :)

Suthish Nair · Answer

Am Sorry for the confusion friends... Am talking about Technical Documentations or Software Documentations . Please correct me if am wrong but we normally says code documentation also. Describes what the code does; What logic written on a button click; Explanation about DB Table structure; What a Stored Procedure does;.. etc.

Sam Hobbs · Answer

Note that life cycle traditionally is inconsistent with  Once this document is finalized we seal it! Stamp it! and Work starts! . In many system development methodologies if there is anything that needs to be changed in a system being developed then the cycle should be repeated beginning with the requirements analysis.

Sam Hobbs · Answer

I know what requirements are. You seem to not understand that I do have many years experience of getting requirements from users. I have helped develop standards. How was I supposed to know however that that is what Suthish was asking? I don't see anything except  Technical Documentations . I intentionally avoided listing any requirements specifications sites because I thought that is not want Suthish was asking for.

Mahesh Chand · Answer

Sam Suthish meant Requirement document. In Software Engineering it is called System (or Software) Requirement Specification (SRS) Document. This is actually something a client will give you to understand their requirements. In my life 90% of my clients usually tel verbally what they want. They do not have any SRS documents. I make them. Go back to the clients make sure what's on the document covers all. If not ask them to make the corrections. Once this document is finalized we seal it! Stamp it! and Work starts! Cheers!

Sam Hobbs · Answer

I don't know what type of technical documentation you are looking for. Do you mean systems and programming specifications? Do you mean end-user documentation? I know that back in the 1980's there were companies selling system design methodolgies that included sample forms. I assume that there is now plenty of that available for free in the internet. Look for web sites for system design methodologies. If you have time look at the United States Air Force's Documentation Technology Report  but my guess is that it is not what you want. The site DACS - Data & Analysis Center for Software - DACS - Software is also from the USA military. There are many other sites that you are more likely to be interested in but those are the only ones I have bookmarks for that work.

Mahesh Chand · Answer

Here is a sample SRS. Actually every business has their own format. Most of them are simple word documents.