title: How do you describe your solution/system?
body: <p>I am about to write some standards/guidelines and templates that project managers, developers and business analysts would use. The goal would be to better understand the solution that is or was developed. </p>
  
  <p>One part of this is providing a standard/guideline on documenting the solution. E.g. documenting the piece of software which solves/meets the business-case/user-requirements.</p>
  
  <p>Now, being a programmer myself I can see that it is impossible to dictate and say "each solution must define X using Y and presenting it according to Z.", as X Y Z is not always applicable etc.</p>
  
  <p>However, I know even for my hobby projects I always end up describing my solutions one way or the other, modules/components, source code comments, API, database model, some taxonomy used, a journal-log, xml format etc..</p>
  
  <p>So in order to continue with my work, I would much appreciate if you could share what you document in order to describe your solution (and preferably also how and why) - I know it will vary greatly depending on many things but any general or specific answer is of interest. Thanks.</p>
  
  <p><strong>update</strong>
  It was not clear, but I was not referring to user requirements with X Y Z. I was referring to all the possible types of documentation a system may have. So read it as "impossible to state that each solution must have: list of required frameworks; operational manual for the server software; required master data; matrix of user requirements vs tests; user interface specification. While it makes sense to produce a such limited set of requirements, it is difficult to be clear and precise as what is the most important/relevant is different from project to project.</p>
  
  <p>Also, I asked this quite a while ago and never accepted an answer, sorry for that. Perhaps, since it is an open question, it would be better as a community wiki?</p>