Samenvatting

With the adoption of values, principles, practices, tools and processes from Agile, Lean, and DevOps, knowledge preservation by leaving out documentation has become a serious issue. We identify two questions that
are relevant for knowledge acquisition and distribution considering design decisions, rationale, or reasons for
code change. The first considers which knowledge you require upfront to start a project. The second question concerns continuation and addresses which knowledge is required afterward by others to deploy, use or
maintain a software product. We evaluate two approaches, which are ‘Just enough Upfront’ and ‘Executable
Documentatopn’ with in total of 25 artifacts. For the evaluation, we conducted a case study, supported by
a literature review, organizational and project metrics, and a survey. We looked into closed source-code and
closed classified source-code. We found that git commit messages typically contain what has been changed
but not why source-code has been changed. Design decisions, rationale, or reasons for code change should be
saved as close as possible to the source-code with Git Pull Requests. Second, and finally, knowledge about a
software product is not only written down in artifacts but is also a social construction between team members.