Software Documentation

Software Documentation means Black Line comprehensively documents the details of each system it creates.  It is an industry fact that almost 80% of the cost of a system is incurred after it goes into production.  This is a common fact because software systems evolve as the business changes.  Therefore, having adequate documentation is critical to efficiently implementing system changes.

Black Line utilizes a number of things to document your system:

• Requirements Documentation: How a system should operate, and the details related to the usage of a computer system are maintained in documentation.  In that way, if there are questions or clarification necessary by either the Client or Black Line Developers they are reading from the same playbook.
• Change Requests:  Whenever a change is requested to the system, the Requirements Documentation is updated to reflect these new changes, thus acting as a change log for developers and users.
• Environment Diagram  Each system developed by Black Line has three environments to develop and deploy software.  Each serves a purpose so that changes can be isolated and tested by the Client before going into production.  The environments are:
  • Development
  • Staging/Test
  • Production
• Support Documentation Once a system is in production and being used by the client and employees, a document is created that holds “common” support issues.  The common issues are usually related to the setup, configuration and usage by individual users.  In this way, there are common procedures spelled out that aid in efficient setup and support of custom systems.
• Version Control: This is a behind the scenes capability that allows Black Line to keep track of code changes made to a system.  This provides insight into changes over time and can help with understanding and resolving current challenges, in addition to providing a reliable backup.