One of the first tings you should consider when establishing a new project is where the different kinds of project information should go considering the project tools available.
Here is a possible information model based on the SBForge tools.
Wiki
All project information should go here, unless specifically mentioned in the other medias below.
Forces to consider
Pros
- Easy to write information
- No predefined model meaning you can structure your wiki documentation as you like
- History on all changes
- Lot's of information composition through macros.
Cons:
- Loosely coupled to source code: This means application related information should be maintained in tools more closely bound to the source code. Examples of such tool are Javadoc, Maven site, Fisheye.
- No version control: The wiki documentation is not directly versioned as part of the normal SCM work.
- No model: As a wiki (normally) has no understanding of relations between different kinds of documentation, all links between information elements needs to be maintained manually. A example of information which is difficult to efficiently maintain in a wiki is issue/task related information, because of the rich data model underlying a issue model. Here a real issue tracker should be used, like JIRA.
JIRA
Information regarding thing to do, things being done and things which has been done. This would be tasks,