Understanding documentation value in software maintenance
Santanu Das, Wayne G. Lutters, Carolyn Budinger Seaman · 2007
This study examines effective documentation use in software maintenance. Interviews with software maintainers, with diverse levels of experience, revealed three themes: reliance on source code, characteristics of useful documents, and the interplay between people in the maintenance environment and documentation. All of these findings improve our understanding of the role of documentation in maintenance. This awareness has practical import - project managers can fund the most useful forms of documentation and maintainers can improve their ability to locate and reuse this information.