Computer Science

Honours Project Documentation Guidelines

In addition to a working program and its source code, you must also author the documents discussed below to gain full credit for the programming project. The fundamental structure of these documents is entirely independent of project, programming language, and operating system. 
 
You will find a number of advantages when you pursue a rigid documentation approach to programming. First of all, you will have a firm understanding of the task at hand before you start coding. A good understand of the problem leads to a clean design that tends to have fewer bugs. Always make your goal to program it right the first time. The next advantage is that others will be able to use your documentation to test the program, fix bugs, and make enhancements. In the corporate world, these duties are normally performed by different people and often by different groups within a single company. Therefore, the more detailed, organised, and easy-to-read your documentation is, the more you help other people do their jobs. As you learn to write solid documentation, you will also come to appreciate reading solid documentation, and will eventually detest reading technical jargon (the world is full of poorly written technical books and manuals). In other words, write simply and clearly. The way you write is just as important as the details you present. Always strive to spell correctly and use proper grammar. The campus Writing Center can aid you in this respect.
 

• User Requirements Document (URD)
• Requirements Analysis Document (RAD)
• User Interface Specification (UIS)
• The Prototype
• Object Orientated Analysis (OOA) or High Level Design (HLD)
• Object Orientated Design (OOD) or Low Level Design (LLD)
• Code Do