Undergraduate - UnitFIT2043 - Technical documentation for software engineers

This unit entry is for students who completed this unit in 2014 only. For students planning to study the unit, please refer to the unit indexes in the the current edition of the Handbook. If you have any queries contact the managing faculty for your course or area of study.

print version

6 points, SCA Band 1, 0.125 EFTSL

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Level	Undergraduate
Faculty	Faculty of Information Technology
Offered	Clayton Second semester 2014 (Day)

Synopsis

This unit covers problems with paper-based and on-line documentation; types of technical documentation used in software engineering; the role of various different forms of technical documentation in the software development process; document specifications; the context of technical writing; the writing process (analysis, planning, generation, testing, revision and maintenance of written texts); document publication techniques (such SGML, LaTeX, and/or XML); the role of hypertext, hypermedia and markup languages in technical documentation; small-volume and large-volume hypertext; collaborative hypertext; intelligent hypertext.

Outcomes

On successful completion of this unit, students should be able to:

produce well-organised and clear technical documentation;
explain the purposes and uses of the different types of technical documentation, including code documentation, internal design documentation, external design documentation, reference manuals, guides, and tutorials;
distinguish between the different types of tools for producing documentation (text editors, formatters, typesetters, desktop publishers, graphics tools, printing and viewing tools) and select tools that are appropriate for specified applications;
produce technical documentation that is written in an appropriate style and at an appropriate level for different classes of readers, including fellow software engineering professionals, managers, clients, and end-users;
evaluate the correctness, appropriateness, and usability of written documentation, and apply strategies to improve these;
correctly use specified software tools to create and publish technical documentation.