It is a quite old story, when a software development become chaotic because trial and error from developer, a lot of change request and response from the stakeholder, and a short emotional delay because of the budget issues. Although the successful project is not entirely because of documentation, the documentation holds an important things to keep the team remember, keep the team have same rhythm, and keep the client understand what the project already did. THis article will asnwer what the essential documentation that needed to run a software engineering project, especially on Agile software engineering project.
Step 1. Preparing Team Workspace for Your Codes
Team collaboration need a place, and Visual Studio Online can give you more for free (five seat basic user). it has team room, source code versioning, and of course user story management. You can register at http://visualstudio.com , after that create a project with MSF Agile Template
Step 2. Preparing Team Workspace for Document Artifact
Team workspace for document can be formed as a shared folder on a free storage like OneDrive or OneDrive for Business. You can also build a team site using Office 365 and after that Sync it with OneDrive.
Step 3. Creating a list of documentation
Based on the Agile discpline, we can list the needed document as follow:
- Project proposal, you should give a clear scope and work area for your project. Therefore, the project proposal is necessary needed.
- User story document. you can build your user story on VS Online or separated document. Make sure you also have the original recoding from planning game session with client.
- Release and iteration planning document, you write this plan on VS Online or create separated document with Microsoft Project. Make sure this plan is approved by the client.
- Software architecture document, you can write the document about the software architecture or reverse engineering it from the Visual Studio 2013 pro or better.
- Changes management document, you can write the worksheet that cover the requested changes about the software. Please note any approved changes will have an impact to the user story document, release and iteartion plan, and also software architecture, please be wise to approve the changes.
- Test case document and bugs documentation. Create a test case on VS Online and put bugs workitem on the documentation, or you can use a conventional spreadsheet document
- User manual document. it can be a document or video tutorial depend on the user culture.
- Writes and meeting report on OneNote log book that store on the OneDrive
- Project report document.
That’s all for today, we will discuss on each documentation the next post. Happy weekend, please see some good references below