Capability patterns

Capability patterns are a special type of process that describe a reusable cluster of activities in common process areas. Capability patterns express and communicate process knowledge for a key area of interest, such as a discipline, and can be directly used by process practitioners to guide their work. Capability patterns are also used as building blocks to assemble delivery processes or larger capability patterns ensuring optimal reuse and application of the key practices they express.

Examples of capability patterns include use case-based requirements management, use case analysis, or unit testing. Typically, but not necessarily, capability patterns have the scope of one discipline providing a breakdown of reusable complex activities, relationships to the roles which perform tasks within these activities, in addition to the work products that are used and produced. A capability pattern does not relate to any specific phase or iteration of a development lifecycle, and should not imply any. In other words, a pattern should be designed in a way that it is applicable anywhere in a delivery process, thereby enabling its activities to be flexibly assigned to whatever phases there are in the delivery process to which it is being applied.

When developing a process, it is not necessary to develop the process from the beginning, adding descriptors one by one. You can reuse existing capability patterns or even capability pattern parts to individually customize the pattern's content to the particular situation for which it is applied. A capability pattern must be applied to one specific activity in a process.