Comprehensive Documentation Made Agile – Experiments with RaPiD7 in Philips

Abstract

This paper addresses the almost never-ending headache the role of documentation has given for software projects. Working software has been given recently a focus over comprehensive documentation, yet the required documents should be authored. This paper “revisits” the approach developed by Nokia improving the documentation work without scarifying the quantity or quality of documentation. The method is called RaPiD7. The cases presented are from Philips Digital Systems Laboratory. This paper elaborates the method by providing insights to applying RaPiD7 in practice, explains the encouraging results of the experiments and gives tips for practitioners of the method by explaining the lessons learned in Philips.