Experience of Knowledge-Sharing on large Software Projects
First off I guess the project I'm working on isn't huge - 30-40 developers - but the software has been developed over a number of years and is an ongoing project of upgrades, new features etc.
A few issues I find are:
- going into areas of code I'm not familiar with can be daunting particularly when you come across something that doesn't seem to make sense;
- working on new developments where you want to ensure you aren't writing something that doesn't exist elsewhere;
- making sure that the way you are doing something in a standard, common, consistent way of working
To help with these sorts of problems we have a drupal-based knowledge base but I find it difficult to search on and perhaps the information isn't always organised as well as it could be.
I'm curious to know what products are out there to help with these sorts of issues, and what experience developers have of using them.
A few issues I find are:
- going into areas of code I'm not familiar with can be daunting particularly when you come across something that doesn't seem to make sense;
- working on new developments where you want to ensure you aren't writing something that doesn't exist elsewhere;
- making sure that the way you are doing something in a standard, common, consistent way of working
To help with these sorts of problems we have a drupal-based knowledge base but I find it difficult to search on and perhaps the information isn't always organised as well as it could be.
I'm curious to know what products are out there to help with these sorts of issues, and what experience developers have of using them.
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER
I had hoped this would get a few more comments - no offence Tommy yours were very interesting - so I'm going to click the "request attention".
I guess this is a different type of question - it isn't a closed question with a specific answer, it is open where I'd just like to hear different opinions and experiences.
For example, do some companies have software "librarians" to organize and order technical programmer information?
I guess this is a different type of question - it isn't a closed question with a specific answer, it is open where I'd just like to hear different opinions and experiences.
For example, do some companies have software "librarians" to organize and order technical programmer information?
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER
I've known technical writers documenting how to use a product, but the technical documentation for use by programmers has tended to be done as and when programmers get time, and in a fairly ad-hoc manner - it can get out of date or can have important parts missing.
I remember reading about SSADM many years ago which of course has/had huge amounts of technical documentation - I don't know how usable it was and of course was at the design level, I'm not sure it covered programming patterns - but some sort of easily searchable wiki of common coding patterns used in a programme, a big picture of the architecture of a system and with perhaps some record of design discussions - why things were done a certain way - would be a huge help for many projects.
I remember reading about SSADM many years ago which of course has/had huge amounts of technical documentation - I don't know how usable it was and of course was at the design level, I'm not sure it covered programming patterns - but some sort of easily searchable wiki of common coding patterns used in a programme, a big picture of the architecture of a system and with perhaps some record of design discussions - why things were done a certain way - would be a huge help for many projects.
SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER
Thanks for all the comments.
ASKER
https://code.google.com/p/