Managing process descriptions and practices

After you create a project area, you can create a process description and practices for that project area. Alternatively, you can import a process description into the project area. A process description contains one or more practices. You can also create process descriptions for team areas and process templates, and you can import process descriptions into team areas.

A process description and its practices describe the process that the project area uses to govern how team members work. New team members can consult the project area's process description to learn how to work with the rest of the team. A process description typically describes the user roles and the tasks each role performs; work artifacts that the team creates; work item types and their work flows; and the set of practices that the team follows.

A practice is a set of techniques for accomplishing a goal in a specific context. In terms of systems and software development, a practice:

• Addresses one aspect of the development life cycle, such as managing requirements for a small agile team; creating release plans; and testing new features.
• Evolves as improvements are discovered over time.
• Is based on what has proved successful.

In addition to creating process descriptions and practices, you can export them so that they can be used by administrators of other project areas or by users of IBM® Method Composer. For example, you might start by importing a process description or practice from Method Composer; customize it for your project area; export it; and then import the customized version into Method Composer.