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| <title>Method Content Authoring Overview</title> |
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| <h1 class="topictitle1">Method Content Authoring Overview</h1> |
| <div><p>Method content is described by defining tasks that have work products as |
| inputs and outputs and that are performed by roles. The roles also define |
| responsibility relationships to the work products.</p> |
| <p><img src="mc.gif" alt="" /></p> |
| <p>The figure above depicts typical sources for method content, as well as |
| how the method content is represented. To learn about development methods, |
| people research in libraries or receive training. Development methods are |
| typically described in publications such as books, articles, training material, |
| standards and regulations, or any other form of documentation. These sources |
| usually document methods by providing step-by-step explanations for a particular |
| way of achieving a specific development goal under general circumstances. |
| Some examples are: transforming a requirements document into an analysis model; |
| defining an architectural mechanism based on functional and non-functional |
| requirements; creating a project plan for a development iteration; defining |
| a quality assurance plan for functional requirements; redesigning a business |
| organization based on a new strategic direction, and so on. </p> |
| <p>This tool takes content such as the content described above, and structures |
| it in one specific way using a predefined schema of concepts. This schema |
| supports the organization of large amounts of descriptions for development |
| methods and processes. Such method content and processes do not have to be |
| limited to software engineering, but can also cover other design and engineering |
| disciplines such as mechanical engineering, business transformation, sales |
| cycles, and so on. </p> |
| <p>The schema for method content is represented this tool as a construct of |
| roles defining development skills and responsibilities for work products. |
| These work products are produced by tasks that are performed by the roles |
| and have the work products as inputs and outputs. The screen capture in the |
| figure above shows how such method content elements are organized in tree |
| browsers on the left. These tree browsers, similar to a library, provide different |
| indexes of the available elements for rapid access. The screen capture shows |
| on the right an example of a task presentation. This task presentation defines |
| the task in terms of steps that need to be performed to achieve the task's |
| purpose. You can see that the task has various relationships, such as relationships |
| to performing roles as well as work products that serve as inputs and outputs |
| to the task. Find more details on tasks, role, and work products in the online |
| help here. In addition to roles, tasks, and work products, this tool supports |
| the addition of guidance elements. Guidance are supplementary free-form documentation |
| such as white papers, concept descriptions, guidelines, templates, examples, |
| and so on. </p> |
| <p>This tool provides various form-based editors to create new method content |
| elements. Document your task, roles, work products, and guidance elements |
| using intuitive rich-text editors that allow you to copy and paste text from |
| other sources such as web pages or documents. Use simple dialogs to establish |
| relationships between content elements. For example, make a work product the |
| input to your task simply by selecting it in a dialog.</p> |
| <p>Using this tool, you can organize content in physical content packages |
| that allow you to manage your content in configurable units. You can also |
| categorize your content based on a set of predefined categories (for example, |
| categorize your tasks into development disciplines, or your work products |
| into domains) or create your own categorization schemes for your content with |
| your own user-defined categories that allow you to index content in any way |
| you want. </p> |
| </div> |
| <div><div class="relconcepts"><strong>Related concepts</strong><br /> |
| <div><a href="methodcontent.html#creatingreusablemethodcontents">Method Content</a></div> |
| </div> |
| <div class="reltasks"><strong>Related tasks</strong><br /> |
| <div><a href="createmethodcontent.html">Create Method Content</a></div> |
| </div> |
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