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| |
| <head> |
| <title>Method Content Authoring Overview</title> |
| </head> |
| <body> |
| <h3>Method Content Authoring Overview</h3> |
| <p>Method content describes roles, the tasks that they perform, the work products |
| that are used and produced by those tasks, and supporting guidance.</p> |
| <p><img src="mc.gif"></p> |
| <p>The figure above depicts typical sources for method content, as well as how |
| the method content is represented in EPF Composer. Many development methods are described |
| in publications such as books, articles, training material, standards and regulations, |
| and other forms 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>EPF Composer takes content such as that described above, and structures it in a specific |
| schema of roles, work products, tasks, and guidance. 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 EPF Composer 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 out more details on tasks, role, and |
| work products in the online help <a href="http://org.eclipse.ui.intro/showHelpTopic?id=/org.eclipse.epf.help.doc/html/methodauthoringoverview.html">here</a>. |
| In addition to roles, tasks, and work products, EPF Composer supports the addition of |
| guidance elements. Guidance are supplementary free-form documentation such as |
| whitepapers, concept descriptions, guidelines, templates, examples, and so on.</p> |
| <p>EPF Composer 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.</p> |
| <p>EPF Composer organizes content in physical content packages that allow you to manage |
| your content in configurable units. EPF Composer also allows you to 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> |
| <p>For more details on method content authoring see the online help:</p> |
| <div align="left"> |
| <ul> |
| <li><a href="http://org.eclipse.ui.intro/showHelpTopic?id=/org.eclipse.epf.help.doc/html/methodauthoringoverview.html">Method |
| Authoring Overview</a></li> |
| </ul> |
| </div> |
| <p> </p> |
| </body> |
| </html> |
