Constructing a Reading Guide for Software Product Audits

Architectural knowledge is reflected in various artifacts of a software product. In the case of a software product audit this architectural knowledge needs to be uncovered and its effects assessed, in order to evaluate the quality of the software product. A particular problem is to find and comprehend the architectural knowledge that resides in the software product documentation. The amount of documents, and the differences in for instance target audience and level of abstraction, make it a difficult job for the auditors to find their way through the documentation. This paper discusses how the use of a technique called latent semantic analysis can guide the auditors through the documentation to the architectural knowledge they need. Using latent semantic analysis, we effectively construct a reading guide for software product audits.