| EPF provides tools for authoring, library management, configuring, and publishing. |
EPF leverages the software process engineering metamodel described above to provide tools and a basic framework for method authoring, process authoring, library management, and configuring and publishing. The framework is extensible, allowing alternative or additional process engineering tools to be built by extending the core functionality. Let's have a look at some of the tool capabilities: Method authoring. Best practices can be captured as a set of reusable method building blocks as defined in the metamodel: roles, work products, tasks, and guidancesuch as templates, guidelines, examples, and checklists. Relationships between method elements can be defined through forms. A rich-text editor allows you to document method elements, and graphical views present diagrams showing relevant relationships. Reuse is facilitated by the ability to create a method element as a derivative of another method element through various inheritance-type relationships. As a result, you can, for example, specify that a systems architect has similar responsibilities to a software architect by expressing the differences and reusing everything that is common. Process authoring. Reusable process building blocks can be organized into processes along a lifecycle dimension by defining, for example, work breakdown structures and specifying when in the lifecycle what work products are produced in which state. The tool allows you to construct reusable chunks of processes through capability patterns. A capability pattern that specifies, for example, how to define, design, implement, and test a scenario can now be reused in a variety of processes. The tool also allows you to define delivery processes, which are end-to-end processes. Structural information can often be edited with graphical as well as nongraphical editors. Library management and content extensibility. An XMI-based library enables persistency and configuration management as well as content interchange for distributed client-server implementations. Method and process content can be packaged into content plug-ins and content packages, allowing simple distribution, management, and extensibility of content. As content plug-ins are added to your content library, the tool will resolve dependencies between process elements. Plug-ins can also be exported to XML to allow interchange with other tools. Configuring and publishing. You can create a process configuration by selecting a set of content plug-ins and content packages. Optionally, you can use an existing process configuration as a starting point and add or remove content plug-ins and content packages to or from the configuration. For example, you may start with a generic configuration suitable for small collocated teams and add content plug-ins containing specific guidance for each of Eclipse, JUnit, J2EE, and IBM Rational RequisitePro. The delivery processes associated with a configuration can be further customized. As the configuration is published, the tool resolves the many relationships that may exist among process elements in the selected plug-ins and packages, and generates a set of html pages with links representing relationships among process elements. The resulting Web site that project members use to view the process they have decided to use is thus easy to navigate, and viewable via a Web browser without a Web server. This process will allow users on all platforms to view the published process (see Figure A.4). Figure A.4. A Published Web Site Representing a Process Configuration.
A published Web site consists of a set of html pages, which can be viewed with a standard Web browser. This example gives a brief description of the developer's role and graphically depicts the tasks a developer performs and the work product for which the developer is responsible. Hyperlinks make it easy to find additional information, such as guidelines or templates, for tasks and work products. 
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