The article describes the experience of the authors related to the use of protocol analysis. They adopted protocol analysis when studying how software designers employ available documentation for designing systems from existing components. They used tools for extracting and composing components and for document browsing they developed for their earlier work, along with integral logging capabilities that could be used to record developer actions in a nonintrusive manner. They employed Unix processes as components and a group of four subjects, each with several years' experience using Unix but no experience writing shell scripts. They were allocated two tasks. First task was to produce a simple source code control system that would allow users to store and retrieve particular versions of source code. Second task was to produce a utility to count types of files in a specified path. They gave subjects access to all component utilities available on the system utilities. Extra introductory documentation regarding the use of the editor software and the production of shell scripts was provided on paper