How Is the Process Packaged?
The process is supplied with the base set of foundation practices delivered in card form with supporting guidelines. The foundation practices are designed to be extended with booster packs. These can be written by yourself to meet your specific need and they will be supplied by others. They include packs for practices, such as Service-Oriented Architecture, Business Modeling, Enterprise Architecture, Pair Programming, CMMI, and the like.
The cards can be applied in a number of different ways. For instance, they can be used to:
- Build the deck you need to support your project.
- Combine the cards to create work items for team members or new process elements.
- Have many card instances to represent the actual deliverables and tasks of the project.
- Annotate the cards to add the information that is relevant to your own project.
- Capture instance data that can be applied to your implementation of the cards.
- Deal the cards to the project team, to provide them with the process information that they need.
- Draw a card as a project team member so that you will have the information relevant to you.
- Swap cards within your team.
- Write new cards to provide support for your own environment.
Through the three Team Working Practices (Table 2) covering product essentials, process essentials, and team essentials, the process guides you in an agile way through its use and implementation in team environments. This can be done with a physical set of cards or by using an electronic representation of them. The process helps promote good working practices within a team environment. This is closely supported by the Visual Studio Team System environment, in which the process will be integrated. The process will also be made available on top of the Eclipse Process Framework.
The process is provided with a number of game boards that provide a holding place for your cards. A set of instructions is also provided for straightforward implementation of the process. This can be a physical board to go with the physical cards or can be represented in electronic form.
