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 <html>
 <!--
     Copyright (c) 2005, 2006 IBM Corporation and others.
     All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
     are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
     which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
     http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
     Contributors:
     IBM Corporation - initial implementation
 -->
 <head>
 <title>Eclipse Process Framework Composer Overview</title>
 </head>
 <body>
 <h3>Introduction to Eclipse Process Framework (EPF) Composer</h3>
 <p>Welcome to Eclipse Process Framework (EPF) Composer. EPF Composer is a tool platform that enables
   process engineers and managers to implement, deploy, and maintain processes
   for organizations or individual projects. Typically, two key problems need to
   be addressed to successfully deploy new processes.</p>
 <p> First, development teams need to be educated on the methods applicable to
   the roles that they are responsible for. Software developers typically need
   to
   learn
   how
   to
   do analysis and design, testers need to learn how to test implementations against
    requirements, managers need to learn how to manage the project scope and change,

   and so on. Some organizations assume that developers implicitly know how to
    do such work without documenting their methods, but many organizations want

   to establish common and regulated practices, to drive specific improvement
   objectives,  and to meet compliance standards.</p>
 <p> Second, development teams need to understand how to apply these methods throughout
   a development lifecycle. That is, they need to define or select a development
   process. For

   example, requirements management methods have to be applied differently in
   early  phases of a project where the focus is on elicitation of stakeholder
   needs and
   requirements and scoping a vision, than in later phases where the focus is
   on  managing requirements updates and changes and performing impact analysis
   of
   these requirements changes. Teams also need clear understanding of how the
   different  tasks of the methods relate to each other, for example, how the
   change management
   method impacts the requirements management method as well as regression testing
    method throughout the lifecycle. Even self-organizing teams need to define
   a
   process that gives at minimum some guidance on how the development will be
   scoped  throughout the lifecycle, when milestones will be achieved and verified,
   and
   so on. </p>
 <p>To that end, EPF Composer has two main purposes: </p>
 <div align="left"><ul>
   <li>To provide a knowledge base of intellectual capital which you can browse,
     manage and deploy. This content can include externally developed content,
     and, more importantly, can include your own content including of whitepapers,
     guidelines, templates, principles, best practices, internal procedures and
     regulations, training material, and any other general descriptions of your
     methods. This knowledge base can used for reference and education. It also
     forms the basis for developing processes (the second purpose). EPF Composer is designed
     to be a content management system that provides a common management structure
     and look and feel for all of your content, rather than being a document management
     system in which you would store and access hard to maintain legacy documents
     all in their own shapes and formats. All content managed in EPF Composer can be published
     to html and deployed to Web servers for distributed usage.<br>
   </li>
   <li>To provide process engineering capabilities by supporting process engineers
     and project managers in selecting, tailoring, and rapidly assembling processes
     for their concrete development projects. EPF Composer provides catalogs of pre-defined
     processes for typical project situations that can be adapted to individual
     needs. It also provides process building blocks, called capability patterns,
     that represent best development practices for specific disciplines, technologies,
     or management styles. These building blocks form a toolkit for quick assembly
     of processes based on project-specific needs. EPF Composer also allows you to set up
     your own organization-specific capability pattern libraries. Finally, the
     processes created with EPF Composer can be published and deployed as Web sites.</li>
 </ul>
 </div>
 <h3>Eclipse Process Framework Composer's Key Capabilities</h3>
 <p>IBM Eclipse Process Framework Composer provides the following new key capabilities:</p>
   <div align="left">
 <ul>
   <li> Provides completely redesigned tools for authoring, configuring, viewing,
     and publishing development processes.</li>
   <li> Provides just-in-time generation of publication previews in dedicated browsing
     perspective that allows rapid configuration switching.</li>
   <li> Manages method content using simple form-based user interfaces. Therefore,
     UML modeling skills are no longer required.</li>
   <li> Provides intuitive rich text editors for creating illustrative content
     descriptions. Editors allow use of styles, images, tables, hyperlinks, and
     direct html editing.</li>
   <li>Allows creating processes with breakdown structure editors and workflow
     diagrams through use of multi-presentation process editors. Breakdown structure
     editor supports different process views: work-breakdown view, work product
     usage view, and team allocation view. EPF Composer automatically synchronizes all presentations
     with process changes. </li>
   <li>Provides support for many alternative lifecycle
     models. For example, waterfall, incremental, or iterative models can be created
     with the same overlapping method content.</li>
   <li>Improved reuse and extensibility capabilities. The plug-in mechanisms from
     past versions have been extended to support extensions for breakdown structures.</li>
   <li>Supports reusable dynamically-linked process patterns of best practices
     for rapid process assembly via drag-and-drop.</li>
 </ul>
 </div>
 <h3>Key Terminology and Concepts</h3>
 <p>To effectively work with EPF Composer, you need to understand a few concepts
   that are used to organize the content. The pages <a href="http://org.eclipse.ui.intro/showHelpTopic?id=/org.eclipse.epf.help.doc/html/methodauthoringoverview.html">Method
   Content Authoring Overview</a> and <a href="http://org.eclipse.ui.intro/showHelpTopic?id=/org.eclipse.epf.help.doc/html/processauthoringoverview.html">Process
   Authoring Overview</a> contain more detail and concrete examples of how to work
   in the tool. This page provides you with a general overview of these concepts.</p>
 <p>The most fundamental principle in EPF Composer is the separation of reusable core method
   content from its application in processes. This directly relates back to the
   two purposes of EPF Composer described in the first section. Almost all of EPF Composer's concepts
   are categorized along this separation. Method content describes what is to be
   produced, the necessary skills required and the step-by-step explanations describing
   how specific development goals are achieved. These method content descriptions
   are independent of a development lifecycle. Processes describe the development
   lifecycle. Processes take the method content elements and relate them into semi-ordered
   sequences that are customized to specific types of projects.</p>
 <p><img src="uma_hump.gif"></p>
 <p>The figure above shows how this separation is depicted in Basic Unified
   Process. Method content, describing how development work is being performed,
   is categorized by disciplines along the y-axis of the diagram. The work described
   in a process is seen along the x-axis representing the timeline. This is the
   lifecycle of a development project. It expresses when what work will be performed.
   The graph in the illustration represents an estimated workload for each discipline.
   As you see, for example, one never stops working on requirements in RUP, but
   there are certainly peak times in which most of the requirements elicitation
   and description work is performed. There are also times at which a downward
   trend needs to be observed where fewer and fewer requirements changes have to
   be processed to bring the project to a close. This avoids what is referred to
   as feature creep in which requirements work remains constant or even increases.
   Hence, a lifecycle (process) expresses the variances of work performed in the
   various disciplines (method content).</p>
 <p><img src="mc_vs_p.gif"></p>
 <p>The picture above provides a summary of the key elements used in EPF Composer and how
   they relate to method content or process. As you see, method content is primarily
   expressed using work products, roles, tasks, and guidance. Guidance, such as
   checklists, examples, or roadmaps, can also be defined to provide exemplary
   walkthroughs of a process. On the right-hand side of the diagram, you see the
   elements used to represent processes in EPF Composer. The main element is the activity
   that can be nested to define breakdown structures as well as related to each
   other to define a flow of work. Activities also contain descriptors that reference
   method content. Activities are used to define processes of which EPF Composer support
   two main kinds: delivery processes and capability patterns. Delivery processes
   represent a complete and integrated process template for performing one specific
   type of project. They describe a complete end-to-end project lifecycle and are
   used as a reference for running projects with similar characteristics. Capability
   patterns are processes that express and communicate process knowledge for a
   key area of interest such as a discipline or a best practice. They are also
   used as building blocks to assemble delivery processes or larger capability
   patterns. This ensures optimal reuse and application of their key best practices
   in process authoring activities in EPF Composer. </p>

 <p>For more details on Eclipse Process Framework Composer, 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/aboutepfcomposer.html">Overview</a></li>
   <li><a href="http://org.eclipse.ui.intro/showHelpTopic?id=/org.eclipse.epf.help.doc/html/standardmethodlibraryoverview.html">Getting
       Started</a></li>
 </ul>
 </div>
 <p></p>
 </body>
 </html>
	<html>
	<!--
	Copyright (c) 2005, 2006 IBM Corporation and others.
	All rights reserved. This program and the accompanying materials
	are made available under the terms of the Eclipse Public License v1.0
	which accompanies this distribution, and is available at
	http://www.eclipse.org/legal/epl-v10.html
	Contributors:
	IBM Corporation - initial implementation
	-->
	<head>
	<title>Eclipse Process Framework Composer Overview</title>
	</head>
	<body>
	<h3>Introduction to Eclipse Process Framework (EPF) Composer</h3>
	<p>Welcome to Eclipse Process Framework (EPF) Composer. EPF Composer is a tool platform that enables
	process engineers and managers to implement, deploy, and maintain processes
	for organizations or individual projects. Typically, two key problems need to
	be addressed to successfully deploy new processes.</p>
	<p> First, development teams need to be educated on the methods applicable to
	the roles that they are responsible for. Software developers typically need
	to
	learn
	how
	to
	do analysis and design, testers need to learn how to test implementations against
	requirements, managers need to learn how to manage the project scope and change,

	and so on. Some organizations assume that developers implicitly know how to
	do such work without documenting their methods, but many organizations want

	to establish common and regulated practices, to drive specific improvement
	objectives, and to meet compliance standards.</p>
	<p> Second, development teams need to understand how to apply these methods throughout
	a development lifecycle. That is, they need to define or select a development
	process. For

	example, requirements management methods have to be applied differently in
	early phases of a project where the focus is on elicitation of stakeholder
	needs and
	requirements and scoping a vision, than in later phases where the focus is
	on managing requirements updates and changes and performing impact analysis
	of
	these requirements changes. Teams also need clear understanding of how the
	different tasks of the methods relate to each other, for example, how the
	change management
	method impacts the requirements management method as well as regression testing
	method throughout the lifecycle. Even self-organizing teams need to define
	a
	process that gives at minimum some guidance on how the development will be
	scoped throughout the lifecycle, when milestones will be achieved and verified,
	and
	so on. </p>
	<p>To that end, EPF Composer has two main purposes: </p>
	<div align="left"><ul>
	<li>To provide a knowledge base of intellectual capital which you can browse,
	manage and deploy. This content can include externally developed content,
	and, more importantly, can include your own content including of whitepapers,
	guidelines, templates, principles, best practices, internal procedures and
	regulations, training material, and any other general descriptions of your
	methods. This knowledge base can used for reference and education. It also
	forms the basis for developing processes (the second purpose). EPF Composer is designed
	to be a content management system that provides a common management structure
	and look and feel for all of your content, rather than being a document management
	system in which you would store and access hard to maintain legacy documents
	all in their own shapes and formats. All content managed in EPF Composer can be published
	to html and deployed to Web servers for distributed usage.<br>
	</li>
	<li>To provide process engineering capabilities by supporting process engineers
	and project managers in selecting, tailoring, and rapidly assembling processes
	for their concrete development projects. EPF Composer provides catalogs of pre-defined
	processes for typical project situations that can be adapted to individual
	needs. It also provides process building blocks, called capability patterns,
	that represent best development practices for specific disciplines, technologies,
	or management styles. These building blocks form a toolkit for quick assembly
	of processes based on project-specific needs. EPF Composer also allows you to set up
	your own organization-specific capability pattern libraries. Finally, the
	processes created with EPF Composer can be published and deployed as Web sites.</li>
	</ul>
	</div>
	<h3>Eclipse Process Framework Composer's Key Capabilities</h3>
	<p>IBM Eclipse Process Framework Composer provides the following new key capabilities:</p>
	<div align="left">
	<ul>
	<li> Provides completely redesigned tools for authoring, configuring, viewing,
	and publishing development processes.</li>
	<li> Provides just-in-time generation of publication previews in dedicated browsing
	perspective that allows rapid configuration switching.</li>
	<li> Manages method content using simple form-based user interfaces. Therefore,
	UML modeling skills are no longer required.</li>
	<li> Provides intuitive rich text editors for creating illustrative content
	descriptions. Editors allow use of styles, images, tables, hyperlinks, and
	direct html editing.</li>
	<li>Allows creating processes with breakdown structure editors and workflow
	diagrams through use of multi-presentation process editors. Breakdown structure
	editor supports different process views: work-breakdown view, work product
	usage view, and team allocation view. EPF Composer automatically synchronizes all presentations
	with process changes. </li>
	<li>Provides support for many alternative lifecycle
	models. For example, waterfall, incremental, or iterative models can be created
	with the same overlapping method content.</li>
	<li>Improved reuse and extensibility capabilities. The plug-in mechanisms from
	past versions have been extended to support extensions for breakdown structures.</li>
	<li>Supports reusable dynamically-linked process patterns of best practices
	for rapid process assembly via drag-and-drop.</li>
	</ul>
	</div>
	<h3>Key Terminology and Concepts</h3>
	<p>To effectively work with EPF Composer, you need to understand a few concepts
	that are used to organize the content. The pages <a href="http://org.eclipse.ui.intro/showHelpTopic?id=/org.eclipse.epf.help.doc/html/methodauthoringoverview.html">Method
	Content Authoring Overview</a> and <a href="http://org.eclipse.ui.intro/showHelpTopic?id=/org.eclipse.epf.help.doc/html/processauthoringoverview.html">Process
	Authoring Overview</a> contain more detail and concrete examples of how to work
	in the tool. This page provides you with a general overview of these concepts.</p>
	<p>The most fundamental principle in EPF Composer is the separation of reusable core method
	content from its application in processes. This directly relates back to the
	two purposes of EPF Composer described in the first section. Almost all of EPF Composer's concepts
	are categorized along this separation. Method content describes what is to be
	produced, the necessary skills required and the step-by-step explanations describing
	how specific development goals are achieved. These method content descriptions
	are independent of a development lifecycle. Processes describe the development
	lifecycle. Processes take the method content elements and relate them into semi-ordered
	sequences that are customized to specific types of projects.</p>
	<p><img src="uma_hump.gif"></p>
	<p>The figure above shows how this separation is depicted in Basic Unified
	Process. Method content, describing how development work is being performed,
	is categorized by disciplines along the y-axis of the diagram. The work described
	in a process is seen along the x-axis representing the timeline. This is the
	lifecycle of a development project. It expresses when what work will be performed.
	The graph in the illustration represents an estimated workload for each discipline.
	As you see, for example, one never stops working on requirements in RUP, but
	there are certainly peak times in which most of the requirements elicitation
	and description work is performed. There are also times at which a downward
	trend needs to be observed where fewer and fewer requirements changes have to
	be processed to bring the project to a close. This avoids what is referred to
	as feature creep in which requirements work remains constant or even increases.
	Hence, a lifecycle (process) expresses the variances of work performed in the
	various disciplines (method content).</p>
	<p><img src="mc_vs_p.gif"></p>
	<p>The picture above provides a summary of the key elements used in EPF Composer and how
	they relate to method content or process. As you see, method content is primarily
	expressed using work products, roles, tasks, and guidance. Guidance, such as
	checklists, examples, or roadmaps, can also be defined to provide exemplary
	walkthroughs of a process. On the right-hand side of the diagram, you see the
	elements used to represent processes in EPF Composer. The main element is the activity
	that can be nested to define breakdown structures as well as related to each
	other to define a flow of work. Activities also contain descriptors that reference
	method content. Activities are used to define processes of which EPF Composer support
	two main kinds: delivery processes and capability patterns. Delivery processes
	represent a complete and integrated process template for performing one specific
	type of project. They describe a complete end-to-end project lifecycle and are
	used as a reference for running projects with similar characteristics. Capability
	patterns are processes that express and communicate process knowledge for a
	key area of interest such as a discipline or a best practice. They are also
	used as building blocks to assemble delivery processes or larger capability
	patterns. This ensures optimal reuse and application of their key best practices
	in process authoring activities in EPF Composer. </p>

	<p>For more details on Eclipse Process Framework Composer, 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/aboutepfcomposer.html">Overview</a></li>
	<li><a href="http://org.eclipse.ui.intro/showHelpTopic?id=/org.eclipse.epf.help.doc/html/standardmethodlibraryoverview.html">Getting
	Started</a></li>
	</ul>
	</div>
	<p></p>
	</body>
	</html>