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Program Documentation. Skill Area 307. Materials Prepared by Dhimas Ruswanto , BMm. Lecture Overview. Program Documentation Characteristics of Good Documentation Types of Documentation Stages of Document Preparation. Program Documentation.
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Program Documentation Skill Area 307 Materials Prepared by DhimasRuswanto, BMm
Lecture Overview • Program Documentation • Characteristics of Good Documentation • Types of Documentation • Stages of Document Preparation
Program Documentation • The program documentation is a kind of documentation that gives a comprehensive procedural description of a program. • It shows as to how software is written. • The program documentation describes what exactly a program does by mentioning about the requirements of the input data and the effect of performing a programming task.
Program Documentation • Documentation are needed to ensure that we are able to communicate effectively, with all the people who will be involved in the development of the program or system. • A good documentation will help the user to save their time from spending lots of unnecessary time trying to figure out how to use your program.
Characteristics of Good Documentation • A good documentation is: • Accessible • Readable • Understandable • Correct • Controlled
Accessible • Documentation is useless unless it is possible to use it to answer questions. • Users need to find the required document and the appropriate section to solve a specific problem. • The document needs to have the following in order to be accessed and found quickly: • A clear structure (proper use of folders and names) • A table of content • Detailed index • To be catalogued
Readable • Should be written to suit the knowledge and level of understanding of the user • Also written in a more personal style and should not assume they are technical expertise
Understandable • Documentation is intended to convey information to the reader. • This can only be done if the reader is able to understand the text. • The writer should have a very clear idea about what can be expected by the reader
Correct • You need to decide two things: • Is this the right things to document? • Is this documentation correct? • Correctness requires testing by means of peer view (colleagues). • No documentation should ever be released without such a review because event the best document writer make mistake and it is difficult to find one’s own mistakes.
Controlled • All programs are subject to change and this includes documentation. • Extreme confusion can be caused by mixing up different and incompatible versions of program code, documentation and any other deliverables from the development process.
Document Production • Document production is the process of creating a document and formatting it for publication. • The document production process as being split into 3 stages: • Document creation • Document polishing • Document production
Document Creation • The initial input of the information in the document. • This is supported by word processors and text formatters, table and equation processors, drawing and art packages.
Document Polishing • This process involves improving the writing and presentation of the document to make it more understandable and readable. • This involves finding and removing spelling, punctuation and grammatical errors, detecting clumsy phrases and removing redundancy in the text. • The process may be supported by tools such as on-line dictionaries, spelling checkers, grammar and style checkers and style checkers.
Document Production • This is the process of preparing the documentfor professional printing. • It is supported by desktop-publishing packages, artwork packages and type styling programs.
