More Than a Document

In this report, we discuss the practical aspects of the synchronous maintenance of documentation, visual models and various types of dependencies between model artifacts.

While writing a document an analyst outlines numerous dependencies by mentioning something or using cross-links. By formalizing this process we can move from a bulk of unrelated documents and artifacts to a well-organized structure, which enables us to easily figure out where something is used and what it depends on.

It's also important to answer the question "when and why something changes?". We show how Track Changes mode in Word can be adapted as versioning system. By using this standard feature we can easily

• link revisions to tasks or releases
• get an expressive view of changes covering a long period of time
• evaluate the mutual effect of multiple changes and find conflicting changes

The report is focused on modelling, automatization and systematisation issues in analyst's daily work.