Standards and Tools in Production and Maintenance of System Documentation

Abstract

Implementation of a standard in a software development or maintenance process will provide guidelines on how to conduct the activities in the phases of software life cycle including the documentation to be produced. In addition, the use of Computer-Aided Software Engineering tools or workbenches can automate parts of documenting activities. Despite the importance of standard and tools to be utilised, they are still not widely used. Thus, software engineers still confront with the problems related to documentation particularly system documentation. This paper presents the result of a survey in Malaysia with the main goal to study software engineers’ current practice in production and maintenance of documentation based on characteristic, behavior, belief and attitude. Finally, we highlight on what kind of tools should be introduced, why it is introduced and when or how it should be introduced to support the practice.