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

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