Artifacts for a new Developer

Question

Hello: I am in the process of writing a Developers Guide esp. targeted for new Developer in a team. The system is a legacy system with non-readable code and bad programming practices, but we still want to have some document so that we can give to a new Developer to understand the system.

I have developed a deployment diagram and package diagram for the system. I have also developed a class diagram and activity diagram for all the subsystems.

I want to know from the SO Community what are the other artifacts that could be effective for a new Developer in this scenario.

Thanks.

Answer 1

If this developer is going to change code... than

a. coding standard / documenting changes standards.

b. Database schema / stored procedures documentation if exists

c. build tree explained, if the system is large - what assembly effects others.

d. Test facilities if exists.

e. usage documentation - to understand what this thing does, from the user point of view.

Answer 2

You must consider: what kind of information I would be glad to receive?

I love to receive a high-level document which explains how system born and what business problems it solves.

You could include an use case and component diagrams. Since you said original code is bad, you could also to collect some wisdom pearls from legacy code (post it at thedailywtf.com) as warning.

From that bad patterns, you could go a step further: what you should do when you find a bad code like that? Rewrite? Report? Cry?