AI-Assisted Writing of Technical Documentation

Summary

This video explores the innovative use of AI in creating technical documentation within Formwork, a proclaimed best-in-class EQMS software. The narrator demonstrates how AI can automatically generate software requirements and tests for a DICOM viewer, a medical software for radiologists. By using a magical 'Auto generate' feature, Formwork efficiently drafts software requirements and test cases, significantly reducing the time and effort typically required. The process, which traditionally takes days or months, is accomplished in minutes, showcasing AI's potential to revolutionize technical documentation. The video concludes by highlighting Formwork Pro, a premium version of the software, inviting viewers to explore this advanced feature through a free trial or purchase.

Takeaways

• 😊 The speaker is very enthusiastic about Formwork software and its ability to auto-generate technical documentation
• 👨‍💻 Formwork allows users to easily create products and draft software requirements specifications
• 🔨 The auto-generate feature in Formwork can quickly produce an initial draft of software requirements
• 📝 Formwork automatically assigns IDs and saves generated software requirements
• ✏️ The software can also auto-generate descriptions for requirements with some customization needed
• 🧪 Formwork can generate linked test cases directly from requirements with a few clicks
• ⏱ The speaker emphasizes how Formwork can reduce documentation time from weeks/months to minutes
• 💰Professional documentation using consultants can be expensive, Formwork makes it more efficient
• 🔎 The example shown is for a DICOM medical image viewer and related documentation
• 💳 There is a free version of Formwork but auto-generation features need the paid pro version

Q & A

What software does the speaker showcase to generate technical documentation?

The speaker showcases Formwork, their EQMS software, to automatically generate technical documentation like software requirements and test specifications.

What product does the speaker create in Formwork to demonstrate the auto-generation capability?

The speaker creates a sample DICOM Viewer product in Formwork to demonstrate how it can auto-generate software requirements and tests.

How does Formwork auto-generate the software requirements?

Formwork has an 'Auto Generate' button that when clicked, automatically drafts relevant software requirements based on the product's intended use description provided by the user.

What does the speaker do after Formwork auto-generates the software requirements?

The speaker reviews the auto-generated requirements, makes minor edits where needed, saves them and allows Formwork to assign unique IDs to each.

How does Formwork auto-generate software tests?

The user selects a software requirement first and then clicks the 'Auto Generate' button. Formwork automatically creates a draft test case including title, description and steps derived from that requirement.

What additional capabilities does Formwork have beyond auto-generation?

Formwork allows exporting all the requirements and linked test cases to a spreadsheet. It also has a free version with limited features and paid pro versions with advanced capabilities.

What types of images can the sample DICOM Viewer display?

According to the auto-generated requirements, the DICOM Viewer should be able to display DICOM images, render 3D images from DICOM and potentially compare DICOM images.

What interactive capabilities are mentioned for the DICOM Viewer?

The requirements state the Viewer should enable rotating, zooming, measuring distances and angles within displayed DICOM images.

What export capability is auto-generated for the sample Viewer?

One of the software requirements is that the Viewer should be able to export displayed DICOM images.

Does the speaker think the auto-generated documentation is perfect?

No, the speaker acknowledges the drafts have some imperfections but believes they provide a strong starting point that can be easily edited to create high quality requirements and tests.

Outlines

00:00

🤓 AI-generated software requirements specification

This paragraph discusses using AI to automatically generate a software requirements specification for a DICOM viewer medical software. It shows creating the product in Formwork EQMS software, writing an intended use, and then using the auto-generate feature to quickly create an initial set of software requirements like displaying images, measurements, and more.

05:01

👩‍💻 Effortless creation of software tests

This paragraph explores how Formwork can also auto-generate software tests linked to the created software requirements. It shows an example test for verifying DICOM image display and how while not perfect, it provides a great draft that can save vast amounts of manual effort and consultant fees.

Keywords

💡documentation

In this context, documentation refers to technical documentation that describes the requirements, design, testing, and other technical details of software products. The video focuses on automatically generating documentation rather than manually writing it. This saves significant time and effort. For example, the software auto-generates requirements and test cases.

💡requirements

Software requirements specify what functions and capabilities the software must have. The video shows how requirements can be auto-generated based on the intended use description, rather than manually written one by one. For example, it generates requirements like "display DICOM images" and "zoom and pan images".

💡tests

Software tests verify that requirements are properly implemented. Like requirements, test cases are typically manually written. The video demonstrates automatically generating test cases to validate requirements, like verifying DICOM image display and transformations.

💡audit/export

For regulated software like medical devices, it is critical to have traceability between requirements, design, tests, etc. The video shows how auto-generated tests are linked to their related requirements. These links enable audit reports and export to track connections.

💡automation

The key focus of the video is using automation to speed up documentation. Instead of manual effort, the software auto-generates major parts of the specification and testing artifacts. This saves immense time and cost.

💡formwork

Formwork is the software tool shown in the video that can auto-generate documentation. It includes features to manage requirements, tests, traceability, and exporting/auditing the artifacts and links between them.

💡DICOM

DICOM is a standard format for medical images and related data. The sample document generated focuses on a DICOM image viewer, since this is a common software application in healthcare.

💡medical device

The video creates documentation for a medical device, which has regulatory requirements like traceability and review processes. Formwork aims to help manage this documentation efficiently.

💡specification

The software requirements document is also referred to as the specification, since it specifies or defines what the software must do. The video shows this can be drafted very quickly.

💡parameters

Parameters refer to the inputs when using the automation feature, like selecting the intended use and requirements to auto-generate from. This guides the content and scope of the created artifacts.

Highlights

Formwork software auto-generates technical documentation in minutes instead of days or weeks

Created a sample DICOM viewer product and used auto-generate to draft initial software requirements

Auto-generated requirements look credible and save time - generated 15 credible requirements in minutes

Auto-generated requirement descriptions may still need some editing but provide a great starting point

Also auto-generated an initial test case linked to a requirement, with title, description and steps

The auto-generated test draft isn't perfect but did more in 5 seconds than hours of manual effort

Auto-generated documentation saves enormous time and cost compared to hiring consultants

Exported software requirements and traceability to tests enables audit and documentation

Formwork has free and paid versions - the auto-gen documentation is in the Formwork Pro paid version

Formwork Pro pricing starts at $25/month with free trials available to try the features

Auto-generating documentation could let teams focus more on development than manual paperwork

Auto-generated drafts still require human review but vastly accelerate the documentation process

This technology could let medical device companies speed compliant software to market

Auto-generating documentation may enable more agile processes rather than waterfall methods

AI-generated drafts empower professionals to be more productive on high-value tasks

Transcripts

can AI write your technical

documentation that's the question we

asked ourselves when we try to build

this and let's have a look at the

results I think they're really

incredible but you should have a look

for yourself

now if we go into formwork our eqms

software which is

um the best software on the planet in my

opinion

we navigate to the tech talk section

because we want to create technical

documentation right so we have to create

a product for that first okay let's

create a product here name for the

product let's actually create a dicom

viewer because I don't know everyone

knows.com viewers

and then now we need to write a short

intended use to actually be able to

automatically generate things how about

medical software

software for Radiologists

already

distribute icon images

all right

save it and now I won't go into too much

detail into how formwork uh how it works

and all the other cool features which it

has suffice to say it's really awesome

and it's really intuitive and you can

document everything in here

now we go to software requirements and

create a new requirement and how do we

typically create software requirements

well each software requirement should

kind of just describe what the software

does kind of like a specification model

so you would maybe have one and say well

it can display diagram images you would

have another one which would say I can

zoom and pan in the image that sort of

stuff so usually we would write these

requirements manually and it would be

very cumbersome because you like you

have to type all of these right so the

question is can we automatically

generate these requirements instead

let's just have a look so oh wait that's

the magical Auto generate button that

has a magical one next to it and it

glows when we hover over it yes we have

to hit this button all right so now we

have the auto generate feature for

software requirements let's just start

Auto generating and see how the results

look like and what's going to happen

all right so exciting hmm oh farmwork

actually just wrote software

requirements for us all right so the

first one is the software shall be able

to display diagram images perfect let's

just save that oh and you see formwork

already assigned a unique Adidas

requirement and saved it great should be

able to render 3D images from dicam

images well that's typically many Die

con views can actually do that so let's

save that the software shall be able to

store them yeah I guess so

few images in full size sounds good

rotate and zoom oh yeah we actually just

just talked about that feature right

measure distances and angles yeah sounds

good too compared item images yeah maybe

that's a bit of an advanced feature

check user activity makes sense

communication blah blah blah export

images oh yeah let's let's take the

export images one two

all right and there we have it so we

automatically just drafted our software

requirement specification and all of

these software requirements have already

been saved and have a unique ID so if

you don't think this is incredible I

don't know I don't know what would be

but I think this is really really cool

right we drafted the software

requirement specification and I don't

know three minutes instead of like days

weeks or even months with Consultants I

think that's really really exciting

now how does this requirement

specification look like right so now we

have all these requirements saved up

let's actually look at one of these

requirements let's open how about just

the first one software should be able to

display diagram images all right let's

edit this and have a look so what would

we need to flesh this out a bit the auto

generation it just wrote the title for

us but the description is still missing

don't be shouldn't we be writing a

description uh it sounds super painful I

mean it's just kind of like flashing out

the title and a lot of it is kind of

like redundant can we Auto generate this

oh yes right we can we just hit the

magical Auto generate button oh it glows

when I go over it just hit it

generating what's going to happen next

oh it wrote the description for me all

right the stuff I shall be able to

display diagram images in the

user-friendly Mana blah blah blah blah I

mean to be fair most software

requirement descriptions are just like

blah blah anyway and I think this is

like this is still above average based

on all the technical documentations

which I've seen so yeah I think this

looks pretty good let's just save it

and there we have it a software

requirement is done how long did that

take us like another 30 seconds or so I

think this is really really cool great

all right so now we've written our

software requirements and of course this

is not completely done yet but the next

step now would be to write software

tests so how would we typically write

software test and formwork or in general

for medical device software so go to

software tests new then you have you

have to create a title for test and in

our case

keeping this dicom reading software

requirement in mind the test title would

be like yeah read the dicom file

describe the test briefly and then the

steps would be like I don't know read a

file and the expected results would be

okay well the the file is read correctly

and it's displayed correctly

yeah this sounds like super painful I

mean this is just like manual work for

which you pay Consultants like us a ton

of money which just doesn't really make

a lot of sense in many cases right can

we Auto generate this too oh wait let's

navigate back oh yes that's the magical

Auto generate button it also is uh it's

also here for software tests right so

let's just hit Auto generate

all right now it asks me about the

software requirement to generate them

for so yeah we just talked about

software requirement one right let's

just take that hit Auto generate and see

what firmware comes up with uh right now

so

so exciting all right uh perfect it

filled out everything title is verifying

diagram image display description

testing their ability to display diagram

images sounds good to me oh look we even

have the steps and the expected results

I think this is incredible right we have

like step one note the dicom image

expect the result one images correctly

rendered step two verifies correctly

rendered two it's accurate three apply

transformations

three transformation cycled now is this

perfect obviously it's not it kind of

like it kind of like bunched up a couple

of things here right like it just like

added like a window Wing test here and

uh even though windowing really wasn't

like part of just verifying the right

display but I mean it is still like

crazy right we automatically wrote and

drafted a test in like I don't know five

seconds and now it's just up to us to

like just like change this draft a bit

and fix it oh and by the way

from work already correctly linked up

this software test to the software

requirement we specified earlier so if

you would want to export this now you

could just head over to audit export and

Export your software requirement

specification as a spreadsheet and all

of that would already be in there and

linked correctly

so there you have it I think that's

super exciting now we're able to draft

technical documentation in what minutes

instead of days weeks months so this is

really really cool and I really look

forward to what people are going to

build with this that being said it's a

formal Pro feature so formwork has a

free version and it has a paid version

from a pro being one of the paid

versions if you're interested in trying

this out message me I'll give you a free

trial or just head over to our website

and purchase from work pro and maybe

you're excited just excited as I am to

see what's possible with this author

generation feature