OVERVIEW OF SOFTWARE SYSTEM DOCUMENTATION PROCESS MATURITY RESEARCH

DPMM is a description of process maturity, capability and practices that characterize an organization that generates high quality documentation. (Recall that documentation refers to the system documentation generated as part of the software development process.  It does not include end-user documentation.)  A four level software system documentation process maturity model and assessment procedure have been developed. The model represents an ideal process and the assessment determines where the organization stands relative to the model.  The model and assessment procedure were influenced by CMM in that key practices, indicators, and challenges are defined for each of the four levels of the model; for the assessment procedure a questionnaire, that takes only 30 minutes to complete, is administered to each member of the project team.  The tabulated questionnaire responses are used to generate an assessment report that gives the maturity level and a documentation process profile that indicates what practices the organization is doing well, what practices need improvement, and challenges to move to the next higher maturity level. The model incorporates considerable input from industry. Succinct descriptions of the four levels are:

• Level 1: The documentation process is ad-hoc as some documents may be missing or out-of-date.
• Level 2: All of the documents are created, but there is no control over the quality of the documents.
• Level 3: All documents are created and checked for quality and usefulness.
• Level 4: All documents are created and quantitative measures of quality developed for control and feedback to the process.

DPMM has evolved over four versions. In the first three versions, each of the four levels has a number of key practices associated with it. Version 4 of DPMM only has a set of associated key practices and no maturity levels. In versions 3 and 4, a number of subpractices were associated with each key practice. Table 2 shows a summary to illustrate the evolution the model has undergone over the four versions. These changes are the result from documentation process assessments performed in the industry, assessing over 90 projects at more than 40 organizations.

To carry out the assessments we have used an assessment questionnaire, whose purpose is to determine where an organization’s documentation process stands relative to the model. The assessment questions are derived directly from the model and its key practices.  There are one or more questions for each key practice.  The process maturity level (for the first three versions) and the degree of key practice satisfaction are determined from the questionnaire responses. Each person on a project team completed the assessment questionnaire, The degree of key practice satisfaction was generally determined by the average of the responses to the questions associated with that key practices.

The purpose of the assessment procedure is to determine where an organization stands relative to the model. An assessment questionnaire was developed for our model. For each level of our model there are key practices and indicators. The questions in the questionnaire attempt to ascertain which and to what extent these practices and indicators are part of the documentation process. An assessment report is generated from the responses to the questions. The report gives a maturity level, documentation practices profile, and an action plan. The profile indicates what practices the organization is doing well, what practices need improvement,and challenges to move to the next higher maturity level. Perhaps the most attractive feature of our assessment procedure is it only takes 30 minutes for a person to complete the questionnaire.

What did we learn from these assessments?

1. The most common missing key practice for the level 1 projects was a mechanism for checking that the required documentation is done. This indicates a fundament problem: either there is no specified set of documents that must be created or if there is a specified set then there is no check to see that the required documents are created.
2. Besides the information about key documentation practices, project teams cite an improved understanding and meaningful discussion of documentation as one of the major benefits of assessment process.
3. Few organizations collect defect data on any systematic basis.
4. Feedback, suggestions, and comments from these assessments were incorporated into newer versions of the questionnaire and a revision of the key practices.

We are interested in doing further documentation process assessments. We are willing to visit your site to explain our documentation assessment processs or to send you a copy of the questionnaire and process the completed questionnaires. If you have questions or want further information please contact us.