Software Engineering: Document Management Systems and Documentation

Document Management

• A document management system provides features to share documents, prevent multiple users from changing a document at the same time, and fetch the latest or earlier versions of a document.
• Features also include searching documents for keywords, seeing changes made to a document, and comparing two versions of a document.

Types of Documents

• Requirements Documents: list requirements, expectations, design, and standards for a future project.
• Use Cases: written descriptions of how users will perform tasks on a website.
• Design Documents: detailed plans for developing a piece of software.
• Test Plans: detailed documents that catalog test strategies, objectives, schedule, estimations, deadlines, and resources required to complete a project.
• User Trainings: training documents for users.

Race Condition

• A race condition occurs when two computer program processes or threads attempt to access the same resource at the same time, causing problems in the system.
• To prevent race conditions, a document management system is needed, which allows people to share documents and prevents multiple users from editing a document at the same time.

Historical Documents

• Historical documents are electronic records of information, including emails, meeting notes, and phone calls.
• These documents help ensure everyone is headed in the same direction.

Emails

• Emails can be archived for historical purposes using subject identifiers, such as Admin, Rqts, Wrap, HLDesign, LLDesign, Dvt, Test, Deploy, Doc, Train, and Maint.
• Message classes and keywords can be used to categorize and search emails.

Code Documentation

• Code documentation includes adding comments to code, writing test cases to ensure code works properly, providing suitable git commit messages, and maintaining a proper Readme file.
• Clean, self-documented code should be written.