IT Software Documentation Procedure

khalilb · Feb 26, 2014

I am building a quality management system for an IT department within a big governmental organization. The IT department is developing software for other departments of the parent organization, and they provide maintenance and troubleshooting services for these software.

The IT department doesn't have documents for the software that they produced. I need to establish a procedure to guide the IT department for producing suitable documentation for the software. I am not sure if there is a national or international standard that define the minimum documents needed to be available for software, and the content of these documents. The purpose of the documentation is to ensure that there will be sufficient information for the IT department so there will be no interruption in the service if the programmers who develop the software have to leave the work, or there is a future need for upgrading the software, or merge it with another software.

I need to know the basic documents and their contents. The document do not need to be complicated. Can you provide me with your guidance and suggestions?

Thanks in advance

John Broomfield · Feb 26, 2014

khalilb said:
I am building a quality management system for an IT department within a big governmental organization. The IT department is developing software for other departments of the parent organization, and they provide maintenance and troubleshooting services for these software.

The IT department doesn't have documents for the software that they produced. I need to establish a procedure to guide the IT department for producing suitable documentation for the software. I am not sure if there is a national or international standard that define the minimum documents needed to be available for software, and the content of these documents. The purpose of the documentation is to ensure that there will be sufficient information for the IT department so there will be no interruption in the service if the programmers who develop the software have to leave the work, or there is a future need for upgrading the software, or merge it with another software.

I need to know the basic documents and their contents. The document do not need to be complicated. Can you provide me with your guidance and suggestions?

Thanks in advance

Khalilb,

This may help.

John

yodon · Feb 27, 2014

Your request is rather broad (software engineering is a pretty deep field) and (pardon the pun) a bit soft (asking about "suitable" and "minimum"). The link Mr. Broomfield provided is an excellent general overview. Another reference to consider is ISO 12207 (certainly more costly than the link provided but also provides more depth... I'm not associated with ISO and I'm certainly not trying to sell ISO docs). There's other avenues like the SEI CMM (or CMMI) that may also be useful.

You've indicated some of the goals (serviceability, maintainability, etc.) but without knowing your organization, the potential impact of an outage, security concerns, skill level of personnel, etc., it would be difficult to say what's sufficient and minimal.

maaquilino · Mar 3, 2014

khalilb said:
I am building a quality management system for an IT department within a big governmental organization. The IT department is developing software for other departments of the parent organization, and they provide maintenance and troubleshooting services for these software.

The IT department doesn't have documents for the software that they produced. I need to establish a procedure to guide the IT department for producing suitable documentation for the software. I am not sure if there is a national or international standard that define the minimum documents needed to be available for software, and the content of these documents. The purpose of the documentation is to ensure that there will be sufficient information for the IT department so there will be no interruption in the service if the programmers who develop the software have to leave the work, or there is a future need for upgrading the software, or merge it with another software.

I need to know the basic documents and their contents. The document do not need to be complicated. Can you provide me with your guidance and suggestions?

Thanks in advance

I don't know if you're regulated by the FDA, but their Guidance document for software validation is really just pretty good business practices. See it at http://www.fda.gov/medicaldevices/deviceregulationandguidance/guidancedocuments/ucm085281.htm

Other regulations that you are required to adhere to may have their own guidance documents when it comes to software. There are also some good references at the following links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_development
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_documentation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verification_and_validation_(software)

Good info and it has a number of standards listed at the end:
http://www.computer.org/portal/web/swebok/html/ch11

The links below have a number of software related documents:
http://www.imdrf.org/ghtf/ghtf-archives-sg3.asp
http://www.imdrf.org/documents/documents.asp

Hope this helps!

IT Software Documentation Procedure

khalilb

John Broomfield

yodon

maaquilino

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