Documentation for software maintenance and there documentation of existing systems

Abstract

The importance of software documentation in maintenance work is widely acknowledged by those involved in the work. However, many new software projects axe still being produced with documentation that is inadequate for efficient support of the product following development. When a product enters the maintenance phase of its life-cycle, the need for quality documentation increases dramatically as it is common for the maintenance team to be composed of personnel who were not involved in the products development. This thesis surveys the tools available for supporting the production of software documentation and then proposes a tool, based on hypertext technology, that will enable maintenance programmers to efficiently create documentation about systems they are working on, where the existing documentation is unsatisfactory.