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RE: Documentation Phase in Software-Development Life Cycle
Subject:RE: Documentation Phase in Software-Development Life Cycle From:"nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il" <nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 24 Sep 2003 06:48:21 -0400
The proverb goes: "If the specifications are allowed
to change in the course of development, then the pace of
change will tend to exceed the pace of progress."
Maybe your problem is less that the product doesn't
quite exist yet than that nobody knows what the product
will be like when it does exist. (Or if they do know,
they have no time to pass the information to you.)
Yes, I've worked for several companies under such a
system. None actually declared formally that it had
no window of time at all for documentation after code
freeze, but I was advised that the time was known to
be insufficient and nothing could be done; promptness
trumped quality.
The documentation was not as good as it could have been.
Of course, nothing is ever as good as it could be (except
a hot dog at the seashore) so there were many fruitless
arguments about the question of degree: whether the
documentation was really embarrassingly bad or whether,
alternatively, the writer was a whiny pest.
As long as there aren't lots of other jobs to go to,
I'm not sure I have useful advice, but at least I can
testify that the situation is not entirely uncommon...
Mark L. Levinson
Herzliya, Israel
nosnivel -at- netvision -dot- net -dot- il
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