Documentations in a typical project

As mentioned in my previous post, one can learn a lot from creating documentations for a software projects, it challenges the writer to approach and view the software project from different perspective and thus allowing the writer to have a better understanding overall.

The following are some of the common documentations one would encounter in a software project:
Software Architecture Document (SAD):

The software architecture documents (SAD) gives the reader a complete overview of the entire software architecture, you may not know how each individual component works, or what it does, but at least you know what components exist and forms the whole architecture. This is the best way to understand the whole enterprise architecture.

Functional Specification:

The functional specification is often written by a business analyst who has been to a meeting with the customer and note down all the functional requirements by the customer. There are usually a function specification for each individual "boxes" in the SAD with each describing the functionality in full detail. A good guidance of writing one would be thinking in terms of user cases to outline what the customer is trying to achieve and thus arriving to the list of functionality requirements of the boxes.

Technical Specification:

The functional specification is then passed down to the lead developer who have several years of development experience along with some domain knowledge to translate into the technical specification. The finished product would then be the "bible" where the developers implement the solution strictly based on this document. In the document, usually the data objects, the manipulation of such objects and the presentation of the objects would be listed in detail. In a test driven design approach, one can write out the unit tests based on the functional specification as a staring point.

Test Cases:

As the implementation phase is coming to the end and the test phase approaches, the test team (a true luxury) will be getting ready to test the application. Together with the business analyst, lead developer a plan of how to test the application will be made and the test case document will be written. The test cases are usually based on the functional specification and need to cover all the use cases. Then the boundry cases need to be tested to make sure they are handled in the desired manner.

Deployment Guide/User Manual:

Once the implementation is completed and the project is entering the test phase awaiting delivery. It is time to start preparing the deployment guide, and the user manual. Some of the non specified behaviors would be described in this document to guide the user. Deployment guide would be required should the customer ever need to redeploy the system to a new server in the future. In the ideal case, the system works exactly the same as expected and no one will ever need to pull out the user manual. Well, when did the world ever function in the ideal way?