Software Engineering and Testing

COMPUTER-AIDED SOFTWARE ENGINEERING 243

of computer programs. If a program is relatively static, is coming

to the end of its useful life, and is unlikely to undergo significant

change, let it be!

(ii) Documentation must be updated, but we have limited resources: We’ll

use a “document when touched” approach. It may not be necessary

to fully re-document an application. Rather, those portions of the

system that are currently undergoing change are fully documented.

Over time, a collection of useful and relevant documentation will

evolve.

(iii) The system is business critical and must be fully re-documented: Even in

this case, an intelligent approach is to pare documentation down to

an essential minimum.

(iv) Each of these options is viable. ...