AIX > Trends > Open Source

Deploying the OpenUP Open-Source Process, Part 3

OpenUP can be used out of the box, but there’s also great power in customizing it and describing the specific practices your team needs to perform to be successful. Eventually, you can use EPF Composer to incorporate practices that have worked well with other teams, and you can share your best practices with others.

 

Note: This is the third part in a three-part series. The first two installments ran in the August/September and October/November issues.

In the last issue of IBM Systems Magazine we discussed basic techniques for deploying OpenUP, the open-source agile and unified process. This article goes into more detail on how to customize OpenUP for your team using the EPF Composer tool. EPF Composer is the open-source tool used to create and modify processes such as OpenUP. EPF Composer 1.2 can be downloaded here.

The first deployment article (Part 2 of this three-part series on OpenUP) described how to set up the process, important things to know about OpenUP deployment and some basics on performing light process customizations. This article describes how to use EPF Composer to make significant changes or additions to OpenUP.

OpenUP can be used out of the box, but there’s also great power in customizing it and describing the specific practices your team needs to perform to be successful. Eventually, you can use EPF Composer to incorporate practices that have worked well with other teams, and you can share your best practices with others.

Writing Great Content

Content—the textual description of the process—is the most important part of the process. Clear, simple prescriptions and guidelines can be the best descriptive enabler for team collaboration and repeating best practice. A team that knows it can quickly obtain good information from a process will return to it again and again, increasing the chances that an organization’s teams will develop and share strategies that make them successful.

The EPF Web site has some excellent documents on writing good content. These documents are based on the experiences of organizations that develop large and small processes with EPF Composer. At a minimum, review the Plug-in Development Guide, which includes examples of good versus poor content and has important information like good practices for naming conventions. The Text Style Guide has information on copyediting, copyright material and other information that commercial quality processes should be aware of. Review Translating Method Content if you’re translating a process to another language. Following the guidelines in these documents will help you develop clear and consistent method content in your process.

 

Tweet