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1.5.3 MULTIMEDIA DOCUMENTATION FOR THE SOFTWARE MAINTAINER
Author(s) -
Garthwaite Jean D.,
Huff George A.
Publication year - 1995
Publication title -
incose international symposium
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2334-5837
DOI - 10.1002/j.2334-5837.1995.tb01837.x
Subject(s) - software engineering , documentation , computer science , software development , software maintenance , software construction , personal software process , software development process , software system , systems development life cycle , software , social software engineering , process (computing) , operating system
In the DOD, eighty percent of the life‐cycle cost of a software‐intensive system is for maintenance, and the cost of fixing software increases by an order of magnitude as it is passed from developer to maintainer. Much of the requisite knowledge about the system's mission, software structure, and maintenance tool set and procedures resides with the developers of a software‐intensive system. While some of this knowledge may actually be documented, it is seldom readily accessible and software maintainers must painstakingly rediscover it. To reduce the learning curve among software maintainers and the associated life‐cycle costs for specific systems, new software documentation approaches must be developed. This paper describes the HAC/RMPE Software Maintenance Tutor, a multimedia prototype which has proved effective in capturing system‐specific developer knowledge in a form that is useful to the maintainers. The tutor was built for the Higher Authority Communication/Rapid Message Processing Element (HAC/RMPE) and has been in use since September 1993 as a means of familiarizing new personnel with the HAC/RMPE software. New materials are continually being added. The tutor combines elements of a training system and an on‐line performance aid, and represents a unique approach for supplementing the software maintenance training process. The HAC/RMPE Tutor shows promise for filling a critical gap in the training of software maintainers and thereby reducing the overall system life‐cycle cost. It also represents a generic form of multimedia documentation which has applications in many other domains.