Software architecture document (SAD) in issue tracker

Context

Team is unhappy with the SAD in form of a word document (no real history support) or a wiki (no workflow support).

Action

Maintain the SAD in an issue tracker (supporting different kinds of projects, categorization and workflows).

Use different types of issues: technical decision, risk, documentation, knowledge base, faq.

Use workflows to handle mitigation of risks and tracing of technical decisions.

Use fields for subsystems, themes etc.

What you gain

Good search functionality (by type, subsystem, date etc.)

Risks and technical decisions can have a state, and an associated workflow.

All team members can edit and comment.

You have a real history.

How to strengthen

Connect your issue tracker with your communication and collaboration tools. E.g. get notifications, when a risk changes.

Risks

Acceptance of a “technical” tool.

Different documents are stored at different places.

More ideas at 101 ideas for agile teams

Many thanks to bbv Software Services for making this blog post possible.