Document-driven software design

In traditional Engineering disciplines, designing and documenting are interleaved with design decisions being documented and each such documented decision serving as a constraints on future decisions. Decisions may be reversed or revised but only by revising the associated documents and submitting the revisions for approval. In contrast, in Software documentation is often an afterthought and early design documents often gather dust on shelves as they are ignored. This talk discusses and illustrates how precise design documents can be used to improve the software design process.