Write Great Code, Volume 3

9SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION

System documentation specifies system requirements, design, test cases, and test procedures. In a large software system, the system documentation is often the most expensive part; the Waterfall software development model, for example, often produces more documentation than code. In addition, typically you must maintain system documentation manually, so if you change a description (such as a requirement) in one document, you’ll need to search through the system documentation and update every other document that references that description for consistency. This is a difficult and costly process.

In this chapter, we’ll look ...