Effective Executable Documentation

I have been involved on writing a ordering system with various sub-systems exposing a public REST interface. The team I am working with is made of developers, architects, BAs and customer proxies with a good technical knowledge. Since the beginning we brainstormed to find a way of minimising time dedicated to producing up to date documentation and maximising the quantity of (sub)system end to end tests.

The idea of executable documentation seemed appropriate for the task. And it's implementation turned out to be the based on the RestFixture, an optimised FitNesse Fixture to test and document the APIs from a user perspective. The stakeholders technical knowledge and the fact that the target end user of the documentation were mostly developers meant that it was possible to dare writing the docs/tests in a fair deep techy format (FitNesse tests rather than prose ;)) .

I will share my experience for those who are interested - I am hoping to start a discussion on how effective this approach may be if transferred to other scenarios. I am also interested on hearing from others with similar experiences.

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