How can product development documents be created as efficiently as possible?

1. Introduction

For many hardware and software developers, documentation as a necessary evil. Yet it is an integral part of product development, especially given the increasing complexity of modern products. Documentation is not only evidence, but also means to understand and validate the product design and, ultimately, to enable the release of the product.

The central question is: How can technical documents accompanying product development be created as efficiently as possible? This leads to two core aspects:

a) Which documents are mandatory and how should they be structured?

b) How can these documents be created as quickly and comprehensively as possible?

The answer lies in a combination of model-based development and the semi-automated generation all development-related documents.

2. Documents required during product development

The following documents are required to achieve the development goals:

• Design documents: Architectural designs and detailed designs,
• Design and safety analyses documents: Analyses for delineating measures of fault detection and prevention,
• Requirement documents: Technical requirements,
• Test specifications and test reports: Proof of functionality and safety as well as other essential properties of the product,
• Process descriptions: Proof that standards-compliant processes are adhered to in the project.

Structure and content of the design documents

The design documents describe the product architecture levels from the system to the hardware to the software level. These include:

• Name and configuration of the “parent system” one level above,
• Operating modes, system states and state transitions of the “parent system”,
• Functions and interfaces of the elements,
• Laws, standards and regulations that must be observed.

Requirements and test documents

Requirement documents contain the technical requirements for the entire product to be developed and all its elements:

• Functional dynamic requirements,
• State-related dynamic requirements,
• Interface-related dynamic requirements and
• Static quality requirements.

Test specifications and test reports document that all requirements are met and that all safety mechanisms are implemented correctly.

3. Creating the content of documents efficiently

The content of the documents is semi-automatically created and checked using a combination of automated model generation and structured documentation. Please note:

“The model is in the documents.” The design specifications serve as the basis for the automatic creation of signal flow models in the form of Simulink®, SysML® or UML® diagrams.

We prefer tabularly textual documents over script-like documents such as XML files.

Advantages of tabular documents

• Compatibility: All common Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) solutions and document management systems support tabular documents.
• Flexibility: Easy export and import as well as editing with common spreadsheet programs such as Excel®.
• Machine readability: Enables the automated generation and checking of the document content.
• Consistency: Content is created hierarchically and aligned within and between product architecture levels.

The role of the autoConform® Software Suite

The autoConform® software suite supports:

• Automatic generation and verification of document content,
• Completeness and consistency checks of and between documents,
• Efficient integration into existing ALM solutions and document management systems.

4. Summary

The efficient creation of technical documents is based on a combination of model-based development and semi-automated content generation and checking. Using tabular textual documents ensures that all relevant information is covered and easily verifiable. Tools such as the autoConform® software suite make it possible to create these documents not only faster, but also in a more consistent and complete manner.