Many (naïve) developers always feel that documentation towards the design is a big wastage of time and resources. They feel that instead of doing the same if they spend that time in construction (coding), it would yield better results. Unfortunately, this will lead to serious problems. Let us discuss why we need to document the artifacts related to design.

1.    Quick and efficient Knowledge Transfers – With the standard tools or conventions that we follow, the design can be easily understood in a quick and efficient manner. UML is the widely adopted standard throughout the industry.

2.    Process centric and not People centric – By documenting the artifacts it is a Process centric approach and not people centric. At least theoretically, this approach will have less of an effect due to the attrition rate.

3.    Maintainability – By documenting all the artifacts related to design the software maintainability is at ease.

4.    Upgradeability – All the up gradations done to the system will also be documented. This will enable the future versions of the software to be built easily.

Let us start listing all the widely used artifacts and then understand each of them in detail.

·         Integrated Design documents

·         Sequence Diagrams

·         Class Diagrams

·         Component Diagrams