Documentation

Documents and diagrams

• Documentation represent the interactions and relationships between the objects of the system.
• However, it fail to convey the conceptual definitions of system objects.
• Behaviour of the objects and the constraints on them are difficult to illustrate using documents and diagrams.
• More often than not, these documents are just interaction diagrams representing the skeletons of the ideas.
• As the system evolves, these documents lose their connection with the flow of the system becoming stale or irrelevant.
• On the other hand, comprehensive diagrams of the entire object model overwhelm the reader with details. Again failing to communicate effectively.
• Documentation should be implicit to the modelling language. Not an after thought.

Visualization

• A single visualization format doesn’t work for all types of communications or all types of projects.
• Developers should be able to visualize the system using different visualization formats. e.g. Component diagrams, Entity Relationship diagrams, Sequence diagrams etc.