Documentation

I currently work in a place that uses phpWiki for the developers to write the first draft of their documentation before copying it to a word processed document. This has the advantages that you just write a simple note to yourself so it is easy to work out later what you did and where a specific link is.

This is a half way house between places where I've worked before where they either follow the waterfall process or do no documentation at all.

Following a process such as the waterfall process leads to documentation being written before the project is coded or tested meaning that the documentation doesn't reflect the actual software product produced. This means that the documentation which is usually nicely written up has to be rewritten at the end of the project. This is rarely done.

Not writing any documentation at all leads to problems if a developer leaves for any reason. This means that someone who reads the code will not have an overview of what the code does and will spend a long time working out what it does before being able to alter it or give up and write it.



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