The Implementation Manual (Programmer's Manual)

In addition to the overall description of the technical structure of your product, the implementation document will contain:

• System structure diagrams
  
  (showing major modules and their relationships) These may be DFDs, Object Diagrams, diagrams of physical models (remember the auto cruise control example?), whatever pictures tell your story ...

  Class diagrams, activity diagrams (for parallel threads), state transition diagrams, interaction diagrams, ER diagrams (see OO design notes)

  Your goal is to convey to the reader your mental model of the system design and construction.

• Informal specifications
  
  For each module... (specs will includes inputs and outputs of the system as a whole as well... what the environment of the system contains, and the system interaction with that environment)

• Build and test plan
  
  what is the strategy for integrating modules... what cases are being used for each module... how are the results being cataloged for regression testing... See your text for the details of this aspect.

• Analysis of your design
  
  
  • a discussion of the module coupling and cohesion characteristics of your system.
  • USES relation
  
  These might not normally go into a technical document, but I want you to do it so you might as well bundle it in here.

Keep in mind the goals of the audience when they need to use your manual... changes, modifications, additions, maintenance. They will need to understand what you did, and they will want to learn this ASAP.

Put in this document whatever information such a person would need (or want) were he given the task of maintaining your code.

Remember to ZOOM... go from abstract to detailed. Allow the reader to enter the document at any of several levels. Give as much or as little detail as the reader wants at each level.

Remember you need an on-line version of this... a summary, containing your specs and diagrams at least.

One nice idea is to connect portions of the technical manual (and/or the user manual) to portions of the system diagrams.