Producing Just Enough Documentation: An Optimization Approach Applied to the Software Architecture Domain

JORGE ANDRES DIAZ PACE; CHRISTIAN VILLAVICENCIO; SILVIA N. SCHIAFFINO; MATIAS NICOLETTI; HERNÁN C. VÁZQUEZ

Journal of Data Semantics

SPRINGER

Año: 2015

1861-2032

The Software Architecture is an important asset in a software developmentprocess, which serves to share and discuss the main design concernsamong the project stakeholders. The architecture must be properly documented(e.g., via a Wiki environment) in order to be effectively used by thesestakeholders. However, the process of producing architecture documentationoften fails to deliver contents that address the stakeholders´ information needs. To address the problem, we argue for a knowledge management strategy inwhich: (i) architecture documentation is created incrementally; and (ii) itscontents are driven by a model of stakeholder preferences. In this work, wepresent an information optimization approach applied to the architecture documentation domain, derived from an existing documentation method calledViews & Beyond. To do so, we define the Next SAD Version Problem (NSVP)and then provide tool support to assist architects in producing cost-effectivedocumentation. Based on prior work, we perform a sensitivity analysis of theoptimization model and develop a robust formulation that takes into accountuncertainty in the parameter estimations for NSVP instances, thus improvingthe outcomes of our documentation assistant.