What is documentation in software engineering

Basically, wireframes are the schemes that show how to arrange the elements on the page and how they should behave. A mock-up is the next product design stage, showing the actual look and feel of a product. Basically, mock-ups are static images representing the final product design.

A prototype is a mock-up that you can interact with: click some buttons, navigate between different pages, and so on. A prototype can be created in a prototyping tool like Sketch or MockFlow. Using templates, UX designers can create interactive mock-ups on the early stages of development to be employed for usability testing. A usability testing report is a short-form feedback document created to communicate the results of usability testing.

The report should be as short as possible, with visual examples prevailing over text. Software architecture design documents, sometimes also called technical specifications, include the main architectural decisions made by the solution architect. Unlike the product requirement document mentioned above that describes what needs to be built, the architecture design documentation is about how to build it. It has to describe in what way each product component will contribute to and meet the requirements, including solutions, strategies, and methods to achieve that.

So, the software design document gives an overview of the product architecture, determines the full scope of work, and sets the milestones, thus, looping in all the team members involved and providing the overall guidance.

An effective design and architecture document comprises the following information sections:. Overview and background. Briefly describe the main goals of the project, what problems you are trying to solve, and the results you want to achieve. Underline the guiding architecture and design principles with which you will engineer the product. User Story description. Connect user stories with associated business processes and related scenarios.

You should try to avoid technical details in this section. Solution details. Describe the contemplated solution by listing planned services, modules, components, and their importance. Diagrammatic representation of the solution.

Source: docs. That will help organize the work process and provide a clear metric to monitor progress. A source code document is a technical section that explains how the code works.

The main users of the source code documents are software engineers. Try to keep the document simple by making short sections for each element and supporting them with brief descriptions. There are different types of user acceptance testing in agile. We have outlined the most common:. A quality management plan is an analog of a requirement document dedicated to testing.

This document sets the required standard for product quality and describes the methods to achieve this level. The plan helps to schedule QA tasks and manage testing activity for product managers, but, it is mainly used for large-scale projects. A test strategy is a document that describes the software testing approach to achieve testing objectives.

This document includes information about team structure and resource needs along with what should be prioritized during testing. A test strategy is usually static as the strategy is defined for the entire development scope. A test plan usually consists of one or two pages and describes what should be tested at a given moment. This document should contain:. A test case specifications document is a set of detailed actions to verify each feature or functionality of a product.

Usually, a QA team writes a separate specifications document for each product unit. Test case specifications are based on the approach outlined in the test plan. A good practice is to simplify specifications description and avoid test case repetitions. Test checklist is a list of tests that should be run at a particular time. It represents what tests are completed and how many have failed. All points in the test checklists should be defined correctly.

Try to group test points in the checklists. This approach will help you keep track of them during your work and not lose any. If it helps testers to check the app correctly, you can add comments to your points on the list.

This document should describe known problems with the system and their solutions. It also should represent the dependencies between different parts of the system.

Their documentation informs developers how to effectively use and connect to the required APIs. API documentation is a deliverable produced by technical writers as tutorials and guides. This type of documentation should also contain the list of all available APIs with specs for each one.

As the name suggests, user documentation is created for product users. However, their categories may also differ. So, you should structure user documentation according to the different user tasks and different levels of their experience.

Generally, user documentation is aimed at two large categories:. The documentation created for end-users should explain in the simplest way possible how the software can help solve their problems. Such user instructions can be provided in the printed form, online, or offline on a device. Here are the main types of the user documents:. The complete manual includes exhaustive information and instructions on how to install and operate the product.

It lists the hardware and software requirements, detailed description of the features and full guidelines on how to get the most out of them, example inputs and outputs, possible tips and tricks, etc. The troubleshooting guide gives end-users information on how to find and resolve possible issues that might arise when using the product.

For a detailed overview, check our article dedicated to user documentation. Some parts of user documentation, such as tutorials and onboarding, in many large customer-based products are replaced with onboarding training. Nevertheless, there are still complex systems remaining that require documented user guides.

User documentation requires technical writers to be more imaginative. Online end-user documentation may include the following sections:.

Written in plain language with visual materials and step-by-step instructions included, user guides can become a powerful marketing tool and increase customer satisfaction and loyalty. Besides, to provide the best service for end-users, you should collect your customer feedback continuously. The wiki system is one of the more useful practices. It helps to maintain the existing documentation.

You can create your wiki pages using a wiki markup language and HTML code. Usually, administration docs cover installation and updates that help a system administrator with product maintenance. Here are standard system administrators documents:. Process documentation covers all activities surrounding product development.

The value of keeping process documentation is to make development more organized and well-planned. This branch of documentation requires some planning and paperwork both before the project starts and during the development. Here are common types of process documentation:. Plans, estimates, and schedules. These documents are usually created before the project starts and can be altered as the product evolves.

Reports and metrics. Reports reflect how time and human resources were used during development. They can be generated on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. Consult our article on agile delivery metrics to learn more about process documents such as velocity chats, sprint burndown charts, and release burndown charts.

Working papers. The majority of process documents are specific to the particular moment or phase of the process. As a result, these documents quickly become outdated and obsolete. But they still should be kept as part of development because they may become useful in implementing similar tasks or maintenance in the future.

Also, process documentation helps to make the whole development more transparent and easier to manage. The main goal of process documentation is to reduce the amount of system documentation.

In order to achieve this, write the minimal documentation plan. List the key contacts, release dates, and your expectations with assumptions. Product roadmaps are used in Agile software development to document vision, strategy, and overall goals of the project.

Roadmaps are used as process documents to keep the course of development in sync with initial goals. Depending on the type of product roadmap, it can express high-level objectives, prioritization of tasks, the sprint timeline, or low-level details. A strategic roadmap is a high-level strategic document, that contains overall information on the project.

Strategic roadmaps usually state a vision and long-term goals. Header comment blocks are useful in identifying the purpose of the code along with details such as how the c0ge functions and how each segment of code is used in the program.

Since software code is updated and revised several times, it is important to keep a record of the code information so that internal documentation reflects the changes made to the software code. Internal documentation should explain how each code section relates to user requirements in the software.

Generally, internal documentation comprises the following information. Documentation which focuses on general description of the software code and is not concerned with its detail is known as external documentation. It includes information such as function of code, name of the software developer who has written the code, algorithms used in the software code, dependency of code on programs and libraries, and format of the output produced by the software code.

Generally, external documentation includes structure charts for providing an outline of the program and describing the design of the program. External documentation is useful for software developers as it consists of information such as description of the problem along with the program written to solve it. In addition, it describes the approach used to solve the problem, operational requirements of the program, and user interface components.

For the purpose of readability and proper understanding, the detailed description is accompanied by figures and illustrations that show how one component is related to another. External documentation explains why a particular solution is chosen and implemented in the software.

It also includes formulas, conditions, and references from where the algorithms or documentation are derived. External documentation makes the user aware of the errors that occur while running the software code. For example, if an array of five numbers is used, it should be mentioned in the external documentation that the limit of the array is five. While writing software code documentation, it is important to consider the code documentation tools required for writing the software code.

The software documentation tools conform to standards by generating the required elements automatically with configurable format and style. These tools combine the selected comment sections with the software code to generate a usable documentation with the essential level of details in it.

Some of the code documentation tools are listed in Table. Table Code Documentation Tools. Documentation Tools. Skip to content What is Documentation in Software Engineering? Internal documentation External documentation 1. Internal documentation is written in a program as comments.

External documentation is written in a place where people who need to use the software can read about how to use the software. Internal documentation would be comments and remarks made by the programmer in the form of line comments External documentation would be things like flow charts, UML diagrams, requirements documents, design documents etc. Internal Documentation is created within the programming department and shows the design and implementation of the project flow charts, UML diagrams, design documents, etc.

Importance of Proper Documentation in Software Project.