Essay on Creating a Better Documentation

Introduction

According to Ralston, Reilly, and Hemmendinger (2000), documentation is a crucial part of the development and use of computer-based systems. It is for these reasons why most organizations dedicate about 20-40% of their development efforts towards documentation of new system and recording how these new installations perform. Perhaps, the realization of the importance of proper documentation and its role in reducing the occurrence of errors within the systems is the reason why many organizations consider it as vital. In light of this assertion, the company consulting Y & Z is in a compromising situation. Apart from having a poor design installed, the company's data dictionary, user manual, and other reference material are outdated with no process for version control in existence. This paper will highlight the steps of correcting these issues, procedures of adding new features to the existing system and advice on future capacity planning.

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In general, the process of troubleshooting and correcting problems in a system follows some procedures. Within these procedures there are action items that are equally crucial to making the troubleshooting process effective. First, it is important to verify that there is truly an error in the system. It is apparent that the problem in this company is rooted in the poor job of documentation. However, verifying the problem can provide indications on the cause of the problem as well as help the team waste time on dealing with problems caused by the organization lack of equipment. It is unrecommended to simply accept a report that something is wrong without verifying the failure. Second step will be identifying and locating the cause of the trouble. Most specifically, the focus of this step will be the changes that have occurred in the system. A detailed understanding of the system, and how it works will make this step easier. The team will compare normal state to those experienced by the system now. The third step and what will be given much priorities is correcting the cause of the problem. It is worth stating that in most cases, troubleshooters tend to deal merely with the symptoms and fail to focus on the problem as a whole. It is the problem that should be corrected and not adjusting on the equipment to cover for a defect and consider the work complete. After all these, the last step will be the verification that the issues have been solved. The procedure followed in this case is conducting a repetitive check on what indicated the issue. As Kans (2008) asserts, if the solutions to this problem have been found then the system should supposedly function properly.

Depending on the complexity and the nature of a problem detected in the system during troubleshooting, some functions or enhancements can be added. This is what is known as perfective maintenance. The process of doing so equally has some requirements. Most importantly, before adding these new features, there is need always to follow the organization standard procedures with the key goal of meeting the user requirements that was never recognized before. When making the changes and introducing new ones to the existing system, the troubleshooting staff should exploit all the opportunities for upgrading the codes, correcting sloppiness, removing old branches and above all improving documentation. For instance, the procedure of adding new enhancements will require re-engineering, rewriting documentation, alter content and report formats, and come up with a new processing logic. In addition, to this, there is the procedure to review the engineering change management and configuration control. The new feature should be one that is compatible with the existing systems and one that will not further complicate the already existing problems.

Capacity planning is all about optimization and how the client will work to meet future demands to make the most of the benefits that can be accrued from an organization (Huang & Ahmed, 2009). This should occur in a manner that the IT requirements in the organization do not affect the profit margins that the business wants to achieve. As a result, the advice for future capacity planning offered to the client will consider a few factors. First, the client needs to determine at which point that their existing systems will no longer be able to perform as per required. In this way, the client can plan for when they will incorporate new systems. Second, the client ought to ensure that they are aware of IT infrastructure elements that will be necessary for future. This makes the organization ready and updated while being level with their competitors. Third is that the company must be aware of what will be cost effective to implement while makes them equally competitive.

Conclusion

In summary, proper documentation system is crucial in an organization. Its importance is that it reduces many errors that can occur within an organization. The situation presented to Y & Z needs prompt execution to return the client to efficient operation. If the procedures provided for correcting the problem is followed by the word, then getting a solution to the problem will be a smooth process.

References

Huang, K., & Ahmed, S. (2009). The value of multistage stochastic programming in capacity planning under uncertainty. Operations Research, 57(4), 893-904.

Kans, M. (2008). An approach for determining the requirements of computerised maintenance management systems. Computers in industry, 59(1), 32-40.

Ralston, A., Reilly, E. D., & Hemmendinger, D. (2000). Encyclopedia of computer science. Nature Publishing Group.