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I am working as a software engineer turned team leader in a large software company. One of my areas of strength is node.js, and we are in the process of moving a lot of our services to separate node.js services, which is proving to be very successful so far.

However, I am supposed to stop day to day development of small node.js services, and simply lay down a proper specification, so that one of my team members can work on the actual code.

I am aware of tools like UML, but I don't think they apply to a system with apis built with node.js/express. I have made a few flowcharts, but my seniors want me to be very complete with the spec, down to each implementation detail.

How I can achieve this? Should I design objects in UML and make my developers make javascript objects which can be used in express routes?

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Why don't you think that UML applies to a system with apis built with node.js/express? – Marco May 8 at 4:35
@Munim - what are your seniors' expectations for your specifications? If you haven't already, you should ask them what they expect you to produce. – Derek May 23 at 21:25
@Derek the seniors are new to node.js themselves, but they expect me to produce enough documentation which will allow any developer to work on the project without leaving any room for errors or doubt. – Munim May 24 at 10:01
@Munim - I wasn't sure if you were expected to do more than draft out an API for your projects. What I was thinking is, are your superiors expecting a thick document describing every detail of each of your team's upcoming projects (as is typical with waterfall development)? Or are they looking for documented acceptance tests to drive your development (as is often the case with agile development)? I was curious what type of documentation they're expecting. – Derek May 24 at 14:24

1 Answer

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Apart from the obvious text description, I think that a sequence diagram would do the job. Any more specific and You might as well write the code.

Sequence diagrams

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I use this tool for sequence diagrams: websequencediagrams.com – Ryan Ische May 23 at 20:58
Thanks for the tip. I think sequence diagrams help to get most of the idea across. – Munim May 24 at 10:03

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