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Supporting agile software development through active documentation

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Abstract

Agile development processes are adaptive rather than predictive. Therefore, agile processes emphasize operational system code rather than its documentation. To overcome the absence of comprehensive documentation artifacts, agile methods require constant interaction between the system stakeholders. Ironically, however, some traditional documentation artifacts come to support this kind of interaction. In this study, we examine the relationship between software and documentation. We develop an approach that enables incorporating domain documentation to agile development, while keeping the processes adaptive. We also provide a system design that actively uses domain knowledge documentation. These ideas have been applied through the implementation and use of agile documentation support components.

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Notes

  1. Therefore, organizations which apply distributed development practices tend to change agile methods to follow the distributed characteristic of their organization [7].

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Acknowledgments

The authors thank Yair Wand and Andrew Burton-Jones of UBC for their helpful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Technology Management, Holon Institute of Technology, Holon, Israel

    Eran Rubin

  2. Faculty of Engineering, Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, 32000, Haifa, Israel

    Hillel Rubin

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  1. Eran Rubin
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Correspondence to Hillel Rubin.

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Rubin, E., Rubin, H. Supporting agile software development through active documentation. Requirements Eng 16, 117–132 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00766-010-0113-9

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