Glossary

Activity
Activities are the main building blocks for processes. An activity is a collection of work breakdown elements such as task descriptors, role descriptors, work product descriptors, and milestone. Activities can include other activities.
Activities can be presented in work breakdown structures and activity diagrams that graphically describe the flow of work by showing which activities precede other activities. phase and iteration are special types of activities that define specific properties.
Artifact
An artifact is a tangible work product that is consumed, produced, or modified by one or more tasks. Artifacts may be composed of other artifacts. For example, a model artifact can be composed of model elements, which are also artifacts.
Roles use artifacts to perform tasks and to produce other artifacts. Each artifact is the responsibility of a single role, making responsibility easy to identify and understand, and promoting the idea that every piece of information produced in a method requires the appropriate set of skills. Even though only one role is responsible for an artifact, other roles may use the artifacts.
Checklist
A checklist is a specific type of guidance that identifies a series of items that need to be completed or verified. Checklists are often used in reviews such as a walkthroughs or inspections.
Concept
A concept is a specific type of guidance that outlines key ideas associated with basic principles underlying the referenced item. Concepts normally address more general topics than guidelines and may be applicable to several work products, tasks, and activities.
Deep copy
Deep copy is a mechanism for copying all inherited references from one activity to another. Deep copy will resolve all references at all levels of extension. For example, if an activity contains an applied extended capability pattern which itself contains another capability pattern, a deep copy would create local copies for all levels of nesting. A normal copy would only copy the first level of nesting.
Deliverable
A deliverable is a collection of work products, usually artifacts. Deliverables are used to define typical or recommended content in the form of work products packaged for delivery. Deliverables are also used to represent an output from a process that has value, material or otherwise, to a client, customer, or other stakeholder.
Delivery process
A delivery process is the process that covers a whole development lifecycle from beginning to end. A delivery process can be used as a template for planning and running a project. It provides a complete lifecycle model with predefined phases, iterations, and activities.
Discipline
A discipline is a categorization of tasks that are related to a major area of concern and cooperation of work effort. For example, on a software development project, it is common to perform certain requirements tasks in close coordination with analysis and design tasks. Separating these tasks into separate disciplines makes the tasks easier to comprehend. Disciplines can be organized using discipline groupings.
Domain
A domain is a hierarchy of related work products grouped together based on timing, resources, or relationship. While a domain categorizes many work products, a work product belongs to only one domain. Domains can be further divided into sub-domains.
Estimating considerations
Estimating considerations are a specific type of guidance which provide sizing measures or standards for sizing the work effort associated with performing a particular piece of work and instructions for their successful use.
Estimating guideline
An estimating guideline is a specific type of guidance that provides sizing measures, or standards for sizing the work effort associated with performing a particular piece of work and instructions for their successful use. It may be comprised of estimation considerations and estimation metrics.
Example
An example is a specific type of guidance that describes a representative instance of a completed work product.
Guideline
A guideline is a specific type of guidance that provides additional information on how to perform a particular task or set of related tasks. Guidelines may provide additional details, rules, and recommendations on work products and their properties. They can describe best practices and different approaches for doing work.
Iteration
An iteration is a group of activities that are repeated more than once. Iterations are used to organize work into repetitive cycles.
Library view
The library view shows all method plug-ins and configurations in a method library. The library view is available only in the authoring perspective.
Milestone
A Milestone describes a significant event in a project, such as a major decision, completion of a deliverable, or meeting of a major dependency such as the completion of a project phase.
Outcome
An outcome is an intangible work product that may be a result or state. Outcomes may also be used to describe work products that are not formally defined.
Phase
A phase is a type of activity that represents a significant period in a project. Phases typically conclude with a management checkpoint, milestone or set of deliverable artifacts.
Practice
A practice represents a proven way or strategy of doing work to achieve a goal that has a positive impact on work product or process quality. Practices are defined orthogonal to methods and processes. They could summarize aspects that impact many different parts of a method or specific processes. Examples for practices would be manage risks, continuously verify quality, architecture centric, and component based development, to name a few.
Preview
Preview displays method content in browser format similar to how it will appear to an end user browsing a published web site.
Report
A report is a predefined template of a result that is generated on the basis of other work products as an output from some form of tool automation. For example, a report may combine a graphical model from a design tool with textual information documents.
Reusable asset
A reusable asset provides a solution to a problem for a given context. The asset has rules for usage which are the instructions describing how the asset should be used.
Roadmap
A roadmap is a specific type of guidance that describes how a process is typically performed. Often processes can be much easier understood by providing a walkthrough of a typical instance of the process. In addition to making the process practitioner understand how work in the process is being performed, a roadmap provides additional information about how activities and tasks relate to each other over time.
Role
A role is a well-defined set of related skills, competencies, and responsibilities. Roles can be filled by one person or multiple people. One person may fill several roles. Roles perform tasks.
Role set
A role set is used to group roles with certain commonalities together. For example, in a software development environment, an Analyst role set could be used to group together roles such as Business Process Analyst, System Analyst and Requirements Specifier. Each of these roles work with similar techniques and have overlapping skills, but may be responsible for performing certain tasks and creating certain work products. Role sets can be organized using role set groupings.
Role set grouping
Role sets can be categorized into role set groupings. For example, different methods might define similar role sets which need to be distinguished from each other on a global scale.
Step
A step is a part of the overall work described for a task. The collection of steps defined for a task represents all the work that should be considered to achieve the overall goal of the task. Not all steps are necessarily performed each time a task is invoked in a process. Steps are generally unordered and can be performed in any order.
Supporting material
Supporting material is a generic type of guidance containing information not specifically covered by the other guidance types.
Synchronization
Synchronization is a mechanism whereby changes to information in method elements can be automatically updated in related process elements. For example, if a name of a method content element is changed, the new name will be displayed in all processes that use that method element.
There are two types of synchronization:
  • Custom synchronization at the activity level will update descriptors in activities by bringing in task descriptor's associations.
  • Default synchronization at the activity level will update activities by bringing in task descriptor's associations.
Task
A task is an assignable unit of work. Every task is assigned to a specific role. The duration of a task is generally a few hours to a few days. Tasks usually generate one or more work products.
Template
A template is a specific type of guidance that provides a work product with a predefined table of contents, sections, packages, and headings. Templates provide a standardized format, as well as descriptions of how the sections and packages are supposed to be used and completed. Templates can be provided for documents as well as conceptual models or physical data stores.
Term definition
Term definitions define specific terms, concepts, or other ideas relevant to method and process content. A term definition is not directly related to any content elements, but relationships are derived when the term is used in the description text in a content element.
Tool mentor
A tool mentor is a type of guidance that shows how to use a specific software application to accomplish a piece of work.
White paper
A white paper is a special type of guidance which includes reports and recommendations. White papers can be read and understood as independent documents, in isolation of other method elements and guidance.
Work product
Work product is a general term for task inputs and outputs, descriptions of content elements that are used to define anything used, produced, or modified by a task. The three types of work product are:
  • Artifact
  • Outcome
  • Deliverable
Work product descriptor
A work product descriptor is a work product in the context of one specific activity. Every breakdown structure can define different relationships of work product descriptors to task descriptors and role descriptors. One work product can be represented by many work product descriptors, each within the context of an activity with its own set of relationships.
Work product kind
Work product kind is another category for grouping work products. A work product can belong to multiple work product kinds.