Document management in software development activities: standards and feasibility of open source solutions

Abstract

Software development is one activity that requires an efficient management of information. In this context, following well-defined information management practices do not only provide advantages for providers and customers; in most of the cases, there is a need to be compliant with different standards that enforce organizations to follow specific rules and practices for the identification and management of documents. In addition, organizations involved in software development activities must manage the complex evolution of documents and other items that, although usually endorsed in textual documents, require a separate, specific management. This happens with software requirements, design elements or the hardware platform on which the software will be executed. All these items, among others, constitute the configuration of the software. This term refers to the set of programs, data, documents and technical infrastructure that permits its development and execution. Efficient management of these elemntes is one of the main challenges for information professionals working in these scenarios, and one of the difficulties is probably due to the need to adapt currently available EDMS (Electronic Document Management Systems) to these situations and to the applicable standards. The author presents the main issues regarding the management of the different information items and documents in software configuration and the customisation completed in an open source document and content management system to manage configuration items in software development projects.