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I came to a successful project with 4 years old, it is already in the production. The problem is that, the project is not documented anymore, it depends on 2 senior developers only, they know the system, they test, they handle change of requests..

I need to know what is the best practice, or what are the main steps that I have to do in order to document all the modules starting from high level design through component analysis & design, code comments, till the configuration management.

The traditional project management processes don't give me a clear idea of how to take the control back of a an old project.

Thanks.

Bassel Kh
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1 Answers1

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Senior developers will easilly get bothered if you make them write docummentation all day long so you may lose them at the end.

I would hire a technical writer / junior developer if I were you and give him or her this as a first task. I would also make him or her work closelly with the senior guys, without taking too much from their time (like aggregating questions and have a one hour session dailly or something like that).

It will probably hurt in the beginning but if properly executed should prove a good choice at the end.

Note: The level of cooperation between your senior guys and the new guy that will be doing the documentation may vary depending on some internal "political" things like if the developers feel threatened by the fact that you are trying to make them less critical to the project, how overwhealming the new guy / gal is to them and so on. So answer those questions before going for it.

Once again - it is my personal opinion on the given topic and its success will definatelly depend on various factors. So you should decide if it is a good way to go or not.

Pavel Donchev
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