Software Template for Evaluating and Scoring Software Project Documentations

Abstract

Significant documentation is been formed with almost all software projects, irrespective of application. Software project documentation is a perspective whose purpose is to communicate information about the software system. For research purpose documentations of final year students of Masters level course have been considered for the research purpose. These documentations consist of the artefacts like requirement analysis, technical environment, database design, structural and object oriented modelling techniques, screen layouts and testing techniques along with test case and data. The results were compiled from 505 large software project documentations developed during a period of academic years from 2001-2002 to 2011-2012. The duration of these software projects was six months. Errors from these software project documentations were found and these errors were classified into 11 broad error categories. After compilation of results and studying various artefacts in software project documentations 103 software attributes were recognized. These software attributes were classified into two broad classes (a) Quantifiable attributes and (b) Non-quantifiable attributes. Out of 103 software attributes, 39 were quantifiable attributes and 64 non-quantifiable attributes. Subsequent to categorization, weights were assigned to these quantifiable software attributes only for which a survey was conducted. The basic goal of assigning weights to these quantifiable attributes was to score software project documentation. Further, software template is been proposed for evaluating and scoring student"s software projects documentation.

On Effort Distribution in Software Project Development for Academic Domain

“…This is highlighted in Table II. The documentation has been considered the gist of the software development process [27] and used by researchers for analyzing error pattern [28], analyzing attributes of software engineering [29] and design of a scoring system [30]. AHP approach has been used by researchers for finalizing optional subjects by students [31].…”