| A document can be saved, retrieved,
published, circulated, discussed, consulted, and archived. Documents can
take the form of specifications, procedures, memoranda, histories, or
letters of complaint.
Software Development (SDLC) Templates
Even source code files are documents. A document
can be used to inform others of your great new product idea, or to help
defend yourself in a lawsuit. Most importantly, a document can be used
as a contract--a record of an agreement between people about what shall
be done, and the terms under which it shall be done.
Like a good Web page or a good roadmap,
a good document contains meta-information--information that helps you
understand things about the document itself, rather than its content.
Here are a few of the essentials in
creating a document that will help to speed things up, rather than slow
things down.
Irrespective of the content, every
useful document should have:
- A title. This should appear
on the cover page of the document (if there is one) or at the top of
the first page. A title helps to make sure that everyone is
referring to the same document, and that everyone knows the general
subject under discussion.
- The author's name. If someone
wants to comment on a paper, to whom should the comment go? And
besides: if you wrote it, you did some useful work -- take credit
for it.
- The file name. When it comes
time to revise the document, you're going to need to be able to find
it.
- A date. Documents get revised
all the time; a date stamp ensures that everyone reading is in synch
with everyone else.
- A draft number. A date alone
won't cut it. Alas, in the fast- moving computer software biz, there
may be more than one revision of a document on a single day.
- An abstract. This is anything
from a quick sentence to a paragraph describing the content, scope,
and intended audience for the document. This sets the expectations
of the reader, and helps to make the purpose of the document clear.
- A running footer at the bottom of
the page. The running footer contains important information
about the document. This information should include:
- A page number. How many of us
have spent pointless hours in meetings saying things like "No...
not that page... the one after that... look here -- the page
that begins with '...and an unripe watermelon.'"
- A total number of pages to
accompany the page number. It's much easier that way to tell if
you're missing the last five pages of the document.
- The document's title and author.
This makes it a lot easier to sort things at the network
printer, or if there's a pile of unstapled documents on the
table.
- The revision date and, if
possible, the draft number -- to help explain why your page 6
and my page 6 are different, and which one of us has the current
version.
- An indication if it's a
confidential or copyrighted document.
Now: who has the time to set all
this up for each document? Well, why bother when you can get a machine
to do it for you? If you use Microsoft Word, the attached document
template which I have named
Standard.dot
will allow you to do almost all of the housework automatically.
Use Case Templates
Each time you wish to create a new
document, there are three even simpler steps:
- Choose Word's File / New option from
the menu bar. Due to an inconsistency (I believe it to be a bug) in
Word, Ctrl-N, the keyboard shortcut for creating a new file, does
not display a choice of document templates, so use File / New
instead. One of the templates displayed will be "Standard". Choose
this template.
- Before you do anything else with the
document, choose File / Properties from the menu bar. Under the
Summary tab, edit the Title and Author fields to reflect the title
of the document and your name.
- Replace the abstract provided with
one that reflects the content of your document.
The document information is set up for
you, and so is your running footer. In fact, everything is set up except
for the draft number; that you have to do manually when you finish and
release a new draft. (There is a Word field that tracks the draft
number, but this number is incremented every time you save the file.
Draft numbers would never be the same twice, and would run into the
hundreds fairly quickly.)
Your fields will update automatically
before printing, but to update them manually (so that you can see what
they look like), hit Ctrl-A (Select All), and then F9 (Update).
Functional Requirements
Now that you have the document
information set properly,
it's time to start writing!
About Michael Bolton
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