In the 90¹s, Ric Holt and a group of others constructed something called the Software Bookshelf to solve precisely this problem it was part of a larger consortium effort with which I was involved. We focused on tkSEE.
Here is a link for SB: http://www.swag.uwaterloo.ca/pbs/ Tksee can be read about here: http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~tcl/kbre/options/intro.html Let me know if you have any questions. Janice (singer) NRC Canada On 11/6/07 11:56 AM, "Ruven E Brooks" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote on 11/06/2007 10:21:14 AM: > > >> > Who will be the reader of these documents? >> > >> > If the readers are going to be software developers working on >> > the source do you think the exercise will be cost effective? >> > After all, if there are only going to be a few readers and they >> > are only going to read parts of the source (ie, on an as needed >> > basis) then you documenting all of it may be more costly. > > It takes a minimum of six months and, more typically, a year, before > developers joining this project have positive productivity, e.g. the > value of their efforts exceeds the cost in other people's time to bring > them up to speed. From informal discussions, this length of time is > typical, or, perhaps, on the speedy side for applications of this size. > > If you assume that four or five developers on the team are being replaced per > year, > and that better information could cut the one year learning time down to six > months, then > we have something like 2.5 person years, every year, to invest in getting and > updating > the information. > > The problems with just reading parts of the source, which is what happens now, > are that it's often difficult to know where to start and what to read. A > large part > of the 6-12 month learning period is spend building up enough of understand of > the overall > structure so that know where to focus detailed understanding. > > Ruven -- Janice Singer, PhD NRC Institute for Information Technology | Institut de technologie de l'information du CNRC Tel/Tél: (613) 991-6346 | Facsimile/télécopieur: (613) 952-7151 [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://iit-iti.nrc-cnrc.gc.ca National Research Council Canada | M50, 1200 Montreal Rd., Ottawa, ON K1A 0R6 Conseil national de recherches Canada | M50, 1200 chemin Montréal, Ottawa (Ont) K1A 0R6 Government of Canada | Gouvernement du Canada
