Ruven E Brooks wrote:
3. I didn't rule out active discovery of content. In fact, that's what
people do today in our organization;
they look at the code and analyze the code, using tools of varying
degrees of sophistication.
The problem is, it's terribly time consuming, and the same discovery
process has to be repeated by
each new team member; that's what takes the 6-12 months - "active"
discovery of content.
I'd like to jump start or shortcut the process.
[I note that In educational theory, "active" learning doesn't mean that
you put the students on a desert island and
expect them to actively discover particle physics; it means that you
carefully set up situations in which
the students participate that enable them to learn. I can think of
equivalents for learning a large
piece of software, but developing them requires even more work than
writing the 20 page document.]
Yes, its good to call out this point even though I was trying to make
the contrast stark for clarity. As in: put the (constructivist?)
particle physics professor on the desert island instead of plunking down
an undergraduate college textbook. An intermediate position might be to
have a teacher PLUS a book.
Of course, you appear to be making a case for avoiding repeated work by
creating a reusable knowledge resource, so my line of thought wasn't
exactly on topic. I guess a better line of questioning leans towards
the classic "build for reuse" question: will the knowledge stored in
the document be reused enough (before it is outdated, say) to warrant
its expense? At least this question is constructive enough to produce a
documentation rule you might be able to use: hesitate including
anything that is likely to change before you get a new Chief Architect ;)
(Although since you suggest that certain forms of learning materials are
very costly I still wonder about the cost effectiveness of providing
tutors to software immigrants in lieu of certain efforts to document.
Since none of the original developers are around, however, this question
may be somewhat moot in your case).
Andrew
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