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Saved on 2023-09-06 [19606 edays] via changelog.com
Modified 2023-09-06 [19606 edays]
programming

Documentation is the key to a successful software project

Not only do the referenced authors heavily emphasize this point, but I believe the massive success of open source provides us with evidence of what happens when we focus on documentation. The open source ecosystem lives and dies by documentation. Projects that spend time to develop high quality documentation are often far more successful than competing projects that might be higher quality in terms of functionality or code.

An example of this is the PHP programming language and the ecosystem around it. I started my career in PHP and Drupal, and the main thing that pulled me in was the comprehensive documentation. Many of us joke about how so much of our job is “doing a web search, finding a Stack Overflow post, and doing what’s suggested”, and this is yet another example of how impactful an abundance of documentation can be.

In this article we defined the waterfall development methodology, discussed its origins including the “waterfall” paper, did a review of the paper itself along with associated papers, and suggested some ways to enhance your current software development process. I hope that over the course of this post, I’ve convinced you that the “waterfall” paper includes some great advice that can be used to improve our software development processes.