Automating software documentation: a case study

Spatial Technology Inc. has 45-60 developers (depending on how you count) busy writing code. The Technical Publications Department has three writers to keep up with them, plus two programmers who develop and maintain software tools that support the documentation. This team puts out paper and online documentation, on time, reasonably complete, for one major and several minor releases a year. It´s the tools that make it possible. I first describe the tools and processes that were in place when I started at Spatial Technology, explain the issues that led us to change them, and discuss the changes that we put in place both for tools and process. I also discuss some of the problems we faced and how we dealt with them. I report on the current state of the transition and explore how this specific case study could be a useful model for dealing with complex software documentation projects