Design Documents??? Please Help!

[Jason McBride]

I am looking for examples of design process documents or
information on putting some together. I work for a very small development
team (2 members) and up to this point all of our processes have been very
informal. Our team is starting to grow (5 members) and we see the need for
a more formal process for requirements gathering and design phase.
Especially documents on the design phase. If you know of places where I can
find this information it would be greatly appreciated. Or if you currently
have these type documents and would be willing to share them with me I would
be in your debt. I promise to not redistribute or republish any documents
without specific permission...I am more interested in having them for
examples.

Thank You,
Jason McBride
jmcbride@customersoft.com

[Clearcode]

The book "Code Complete" by Microsoft Press has some good advice for design docs.
We have a very formal system here (large development teams and all these ISO9001 rules) but the basic way it goes is:

Gap analysis - How much do we need to change our existing product for the user.
Business Requirements Docs: - Formal cost/benefit analysis of these.
Software Requirement Spec: - More detailed change request, but still in natural language.
Software design spec: Pseudocode representation of what is needed.

..you'd wonder how we got any coding done at all :-).