Effective development, documentation, and distribution of computer programs

Abstract

A common objective of government-funded technology efforts is to develop computer programs for analysis of weapon systems components such as a shell in a missile. It is often stipulated that the programs be made available to all organizations serving government needs and, in some cases, to anyone. However, there is a big difference between a program that is ‘available’ and one that can actually be used in a relatively short period of time by an organization other than the originator's. That is, the transferability of computer programs is not necessarily high. The objective of this paper is to develop guidelines for making computer programs more readily transferable than is common at present. The guidelines naturally fall into three categories: (1) original development or writing of a program; (2) documentation of program usage and characteristics in the form of a user's manual; and (3) the mechanics of distributing a program to other organizations. If the guidelines are not observed, significant pitfalls that are tremendous ‘effort drains’ must be expected. Adherance to the guidelines, on the other hand, should enable government agencies and contractors, as well as many other organizations, to minimize the effort required to adopt and make effective use of almost any computer program.