Understanding documentation value in software maintenance

  • Authors:

  • Sumita Das;Wayne G. Lutters;Carolyn B. Seaman

  • Affiliations:

  • UMBC, Baltimore, MD;UMBC, Baltimore, MD;UMBC, Baltimore, MD

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the 2007 symposium on Computer human interaction for the management of information technology
  • Year:
  • 2007

  • Software quality evaluation through maintenance processes

    ECS'10/ECCTD'10/ECCOM'10/ECCS'10 Proceedings of the European conference of systems, and European conference of circuits technology and devices, and European conference of communications, and European conference on Computer science

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Abstract

This study examines effective documentation use in software maintenance. Interviews with software maintainers, with diverse levels of experience, revealed three themes: reliance on source code, characteristics of useful documents, and the interplay between people in the maintenance environment and documentation. All of these findings improve our understanding of the role of documentation in maintenance. This awareness has practical import - project managers can fund the most useful forms of documentation and maintainers can improve their ability to locate and reuse this information.