A Long Time Ago

[Jay Maechtlen]

John Posada wrote:
>> The importance of the As-Is used to be widely recognized.   Now, most 
>> seem unaware of As-Is documentation.   Indeed, look at the current tool 

> 
> Not my experience, both from the standpoint of Use Cases and System Descriptions. The problem with As Is documentation is it must be maintained and it is more maintenance labor intensive than any other type of document. Everytime a change is implement, the As Is stuff must be updated.. Otherwise, As is becomes As it Used to Be.
> 
> At a gig not too long ago, I was brought in to document the As Is. 18 months later, I left them with over 5,000 pages/11 binders....right down to the server and what was on the server, over 67 processes for order fulfillment (it was the secoind largest online book retailer), and database, right down to the server-to-server replication process (over 100 database servers). That was about four years ago. I couldn't even begin to estimate how much of it still resembles the As Is...my guess is less than 10%. 
>  

At my last gig, one of the things I did was document a hardware/software
 system so it could be moved from a developer environment(in production)
to a production environment.

I set things up so that transient info, like "which app lives on which
server", could be updated by those doing the maintenance for their own
use and convenience. I pointed the main docs at those transient docs
rather than incorporating them. With luck, they may even be maintaining
the transient stuff!
(not my problem, though...)
Cheers
Jay
-- 
Jay Maechtlen
techpubs at covad.net
626 444-5112 office
626 840-8875 cell