Level: Intermediate Gregory C. Smith (gregsmit@us.ibm.com), Software engineer, IBM
John A Falkl (jfalkl@us.ibm.com), Senior Technical Staff Member, IBM
20 Jun 2006 Need a comprehensive offering for process engineering? IBM Rational® Method Composer V7.0 provides capabilities for the development, management, and the publishing of processes. Rational Portfolio Manager V7.0 is an enterprise solution for project portfolio management, allowing for real-time qualification, management, and monitoring of proposed, in-progress, and historical projects within an organization. These two products include integration features that allow the processes created using Rational Method Composer to be the basis for projects within Rational Portfolio Manager. In this article, find out how to use these integration features and explore the benefits of enforcing process within a project.
Introduction
In this article you explore how to integrate the capabilities of IBM Rational Method Composer (Method Composer)
and Rational Portfolio Manager (Portfolio Manager) to provide a complete enterprise process engineering solution. You learn about the integrated process and project management
capability for the commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) package plug-in,
a Rational Unified Process (RUP) plug-in that comes with Method Composer 7.0.1. You'll also learn about
the process for defining your process scope, documenting it within
Method Composer, and exporting it with XML into Portfolio Manager. The project management for
the development and deployment of the COTS package will then be managed
by Portfolio Manager.
This article uses Rational Method Composer 7.0.1 and
Rational Portfolio Manager 7.0, but the process is similar for any versions greater
than Method Composer 7.0.0 and Portfolio Manager 6.2.0.0.
Developing your process
Method Composer allows for the creation of completely new process content and includes many proven processes as starting points for new content or modification, including the RUP.
In Method Composer there are four basic steps to developing and publishing a new
process with new content:
- Create a new method plug-in to contain the method content,
individual capability patterns, and delivery processes of your new process.
- Create the method content of your new process. (This can
include roles, tasks, and work products that must be defined
to carry out the process.)
- Create a method configuration that contains the new method
content and individual processes that make up your overall process.
- Create processes, which can include capability patterns
that are used as building blocks to build larger processes,
such as new capability patterns or delivery processes.
For the third step in the creation of the capability patterns and
delivery processes, a work breakdown structure (WBS) is created. The
WBS defines the tasks, work products
that are inputs and outputs to these tasks, and the required roles to complete a project. It is
this defining of required tasks that allows the exporting of that definition from Method Composer and the
importing of that process into Portfolio Manager. This, in turn, enables the created WBS to be
the basis for a project template.
Both capability patterns and delivery processes can be exported and
used in Portfolio Manager. A capability
pattern is a reusable cluster of activities in a process area,
while a delivery process is a complete end-to-end process. Often,
a capability pattern is reused to create both larger-capability
patterns and delivery processes. A delivery
process that has been imported into Portfolio Manager is often used as a
template for a complete project, while a capability that has been
imported into Portfolio Manager is added to an existing project or template to
accomplish something within a larger task.
RUP plug-in for COTS Package Delivery
 | | Creating a new plug-in and process within Rational Method Composer is outside the scope of this article |
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The rest of this
article focuses on one of the processes included
in Method Composer 7.0.1: the RUP plug-in for COTS Package Delivery. This
plug-in describes the process of evaluating, recommending,
acquiring, installing, configuring, fielding, and evolving a
COTS package. It extends the well-proven RUP, which is also included with Method Composer.
The RUP plug-in for COTS Package Delivery includes many capability patterns and one delivery
process made up of those capability patterns: the COTS Package
Delivery Lifecycle. We'll assume that our company has decided
that the COTS Package Delivery Lifecycle delivery process should
be the base process for all of their COTS
projects. Because our company uses Portfolio Manager as its project management
solution, its IT team has decided that the defined process is to be the basic
template for all COTS implementation projects.
As shown in Figure 1, when you open the Method Composer 7.0.1 library, the
COTS plug-in is included. (The plug-in for 7.0.0 is still available on developerWorks. See Resources for a link.)
Figure 1. COTS Package Delivery plug-in and configuration
Configuration
A configuration for the COTS plug-in
is also standard in Method Composer 7.0.1, as shown in Figure 2. This configuration includes all of the
content required to immediately publish and start using the COTS
Package Delivery process.
Figure 2. COTS Package Delivery configuration
Exploring a delivery process
The COTS plug-in contains a great deal of method content in the
form of roles, tasks, work products, and guidance. It also
includes many capability patterns, but only one delivery process,
cots_delivery_process, as seen in Figure 3.
Figure 3. Capability patterns and delivery processes in COTS plug-in
Let's explore the details of the cots_delivery_process. Open the cots_delivery_process, and you should see a panel similar to Figure 4.
Figure 4. COTS Package Delivery Lifecycle process
You can see the description of the delivery process and
other detailed information about the process, such as the
configurations to which it belongs. It is suggested
that we use the process as is or we can customize it for our projects.
To customize it for all projects in our enterprise, we
can create a new plug-in and process that contain the same
patterns, and then export and import that new process into Portfolio Manager. Because
the COTS Package Delivery Lifecycle content is part of the standard
Method Composer library, it is read-only and cannot be directly modified.
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Effort assigned to tasks
Because there is no information in Method Composer that defines how long a
task should take, when a WBS is imported into
Portfolio Manager it will assign each task an expected and planned effort time of
one 8-hour work day. After importing, these tasks should be adjusted in
the template to better match expected values for the process you are
importing. |
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If we believe that most projects should be using this
project as is and only a minority of those projects will want
to customize it, we can export it to Portfolio Manager without modification.
Once the template has been created in Portfolio Manager, then any individual
projects based on that template are free to modify the
project as necessary.
Almost all projects will require some
customization of the tasks and work products, but
as long as they all start from the same template, there's a much better
chance that they will conform to the defined process.
Figure 5 shows the WBS of the process in detail. You can see how the delivery process is assembled from multiple capability patterns.
Figure 5. WBS of COTS Package Delivery Lifecycle process
Many of the tasks have the attribute
planned = false. When the process is exported, we have
the option of exporting only those tasks which are planned, or all
of the tasks.
In Method Composer 7.0.0, there is no option on the export for including
activities with the property of planned = false. Because
many of the included plug-ins include content where planned = false, when they are exported (in Rational Method Composer 7.0.0), it often results in empty export
files. If you want to use any of the Method Composer-included processes as
templates in Portfolio Manager, we recommend upgrading to Rational Method Composer 7.0.1.
Each task is associated with a role. You can see who is responsible
for a task by linking back from the task, as shown in the WBS view in Figure 6, to
the original method content.
Figure 6. Linking back to the original method content
In addition to opening the element from the library view, you
can also view all he properties of the task in the Properties view. Because you are viewing processes and content that
come with the default library of Method Composer 7.0.1, all of the content is
read-only. We cannot change the properties of any of
the processes or elements -- only view their current status.
After showing the content in the library view, double click
on the content to open it and view the description, steps, roles (as shown in Figure 7),
and work products of the task.
Figure 7. Viewing the task content
As shown in Figure 8, you also can view the roles associated with the process by switching
to the Team Allocation tab in the WBS.
Figure 8. Team Allocation of the process
You can view the work products that are used and created during
the process by viewing the Work Product Usage tab, as shown in Figure 9.
Figure 9. Work Product Usage
The Consolidated View, shown in Figure 10, gives us all the information in a
single view: tasks, roles, and work products.
Figure 10. Consolidated view
Exporting a process for use in Portfolio Manager
Now that you understand the process to export from Method Composer to Portfolio Manager, you can export that process to use as a
template for new projects in Portfolio Manager.
In Method Composer, go to File > Export. To export a delivery process
or a capability pattern, select IBM Rational Portfolio Manager
Project Template, as shown in Figure 11.
(Here you have the ability to export
a project into a format that can be read by Microsoft® Project. (This feature isn't covered in this article,
but it allows a similar ability to create a project from a process
template in Method Composer, except that it's in Microsoft Project instead of Portfolio Manager.)
Figure 11. Exporting a process in Portfolio Manager compatible format
Select Next. You can now select the delivery process or capability pattern WBS that you want to export using the panel in Figure 12.
Figure 12. Select a process and export directory
You can select the type of process to be
exported, the actual process to be exported, and the
configuration to use. The configuration selection
allows for modified versions of the process. For example, if you
make a modified version of the process that contains additional
content from another plug-in, you could create a new configuration
that includes these extensions.
For this example, we use a project template Name of
cots_delivery_process and a target Directory of
c:\temp\CotsDeliveryProcess. There are also selection boxes for publishing the configuration and
for only exporting the elements that have planned = true.
Publishing the configuration files results in the same output as
selecting Configuration > Publish from the menu bar. This
publishes the Web site with all of the process information (tasks,
roles, work products, and guidance) so it can be accessed by
members of the team.
Because of the integration between Method Composer and Portfolio Manager, when the WBS is imported into Portfolio Manager, each task in that WBS contains links to the content published by Method Composer. This allows the people performing those tasks to view the description and information about that particular task (created in Method Compose) in their Web browser.
You can get details about installing this published configuration on the Portfolio Manager server in the Installing published Method Composer content onto the Method Composer server section.
In addition to choosing if the configuration will be published, it's
possible to only include those detailed tasks for which
planned = true applies in the WBS. However, most of
the lowest-level tasks that come preloaded with Method Composer actually have
the planned flag set to false. In our case, where we are exporting
an included process, setting this flag maps primarily activities
in Method Composer to Portfolio Manager tasks, resulting into a more lightweight plan where
work is assigned to higher-level units of work than the actual
process contains. But all detailed tasks are still
published into the guiding Web site, where workers can review them
for guidance about how to perform these activities, task by task.
You could also leave this checkbox disabled and let the project
manager that uses the template remove those tasks that are
not needed from the project. This option transfers the decision-making
process about which level to plan from the process engineer to the
project manager.
Select Next to proceed to the panel shown in Figure 13.
Figure 13. Specifying Publishing Options
Here you can see all the options that are
available when normally publishing your content and processes.
You can then take this published Web site and manually upload it to
the Portfolio Manager server for easy access by the team members of the
project. Edit the Title as appropriate, and select Next. The WBS
export and the content Web site will be created in the directory
specified.
Figure 14. Export and configuration export
You should get a progress window, as shown in Figure 14. Be prepared for it to take some time to export the Web site and
generate the template files.
After the export is complete, you will have a directory and an
XML file in your export directory. The directory contains the
exported configuration Web site and the XML file that
defines components that make up the process.
You can view the Web site that defines the process by opening the
index.htm file in the published directory.
Figure 15. The published configuration
Importing a process into Portfolio Manager
Now that the process is exported, you can install the
process as a template in Portfolio Manager.
Start the Portfolio Manager client application and
log in as a user who has administrative rights to change and add
templates. Usually this person is in the role of a Portfolio
Manager or a general Portfolio Manager administrator.
After logging in, select Work Management, as shown in Figure 16 to view the current
portfolios and proposals, and to access the templates view.
Figure 16. Work Management view in Portfolio Manager client
Select Template to access the templates view. Expand the
LOCAL TEMPLATES tree, as shown in Figure 17. Drag a folder down onto LOCAL TEMPLATES to
create a new folder to hold our COTS process.
Figure 17. Template view in Portfolio Manager client
Name the new folder
COTS Process Templates, as in Figure 18. Right-click the newly created folder, and select Import Process XML.
Figure 18. Import process template
Portfolio Manager will begin the import process. If there are any competencies,
or roles defined in your process that are not yet
defined in Portfolio Manager, then you'll be prompted for the creation of these
roles, as shown in Figure 19. At install time, Portfolio Manager is populated
with all of the standard roles included in RUP, so only additional
roles not yet defined in Portfolio Manager will be created.
Figure 19. Create new roles in Portfolio Manager
Select OK to let the import process continue. As shown in Figure 20, you should see the progress of the import process.
Figure 20. Import process
After completion, you can explore the artifacts
that were imported. Re-expand the LOCAL TEMPLATES and browse to the
COTS Package Delivery Lifecycle folder, as shown in Figure 21. As you expand the project
template, you can see the summary tasks. Tasks and milestones that
make up that summary task are the same as the tasks
created in Method Composer in the WBS.
Figure 21. Expanded Process Template
Double-click Identify Business Goals. Here, you can see the properties of the task.
When the view for the properties of the task or milestone
opens, you can view values that originally came from the
definition of the process in Method Composer. For example, if you look at
the description, the original task description is visible.
There are two special categories of properties we want to
explore: documents and resources views. If the documents
view is not open, open it. As shown in Figure 22, you can see a document link, in
the form of a URL. This is the URL for the Web site of our published
process.
Figure 22. Documents view of an imported Task
Installing published Method Composer content onto the Method Composer server
Unfortunately, this link will not work yet. The process template
has been installed, but the process content has not yet been
installed on the server. The published process content needs to be
copied to the Portfolio Manager server, in the location of the RUP 2006 content
installed when the Portfolio Manager server was installed. The location
of this content is completely configurable, but only by the
administrator on the Portfolio Manager administration configuration pages, using the
General tab, as shown in Figure 23.
Figure 23. Configuring the RUP content location
If you have been given access to the file system of the Portfolio Manager server,
but not administrator rights within Portfolio Manager, try using the
broken link for the content in the newly imported content to figure
out where the administrator installed the RUP 2006 content.
Figure 24. Using missing link to determine location of RUP 2006 content install
From this URL, as shown in Figure 24, you can tell that the administrator copied the RUP
2006 content into the webapp directory of the application. We can
now copy our published Web site into that same location. If you have
difficulty finding the correct place to copy the content, ask your Portfolio Manager administrator for
assistance.
After you copy the published content, the link should now point to
the correct information in the site, as shown in Figure 25.
Figure 25. Viewing linked content after copying published Web site
Another important artifact created in Portfolio Manager during the import
is the creation of roles. From the Properties view of
the open task, open the Resources view. Figure 26 shows that the task has been
assigned to a specific role -- a role originally created in
Method Composer. When the template is actually used later, you can assign
specific people to assume these roles in the project.
Figure 26. Resources assigned to specific tasks
Creating a project from a template in Portfolio Manager
Use the proposal name My COTS project. After you complete that name of the new proposal, as shown in Figure 27, a dialog box appears asking for the
properties of the new proposal.
Figure 27. Create a new proposal
Within Portfolio Manager, a project and a proposal are equivalents.
You can accept the defaults and select OK to create the proposal, as shown in Figure 28.
The dialog box allows for the creation of the proposal
from a template using the Adopt From value, but a template
imported through the previous process cannot be used. Instead,
you need to drag and drop all the elements from the new template
into this proposal after it is created.
Even though the process template has been imported from Method Composer, you
cannot use that template in LOCAL TEMPLATES at the initial
creation of the proposal using Adopt From in the
Proposal properties. You must create the proposal
without a template, then copy the template elements into the
proposal using drag and drop.
Figure 28. New proposal dialog box
After the proposal is created, select Template again
on the toolbar to show the current templates. Explore to
the template that was just created, COTS Package Delivery
Lifecycle, as shown in Figure 29.
Figure 29. Dragging template to new project
Drag it over to your new My COTS project, as shown in Figure 30. All of
the template's artifacts will be copied over to the new proposal.
Figure 30. Resulting project with new WBS
Now that the project is created, you can staff the project.
Select the project in the Work Management view, and select Staffing > Search / Assign. Select the Project
Resources tab. A list of all of the profiles required for
the project are shown.
To actually assign employees to these
roles, you can right-click on the role and select Assign, as shown in Figure 31.
Portfolio Manager will help you find the employees best suited, in skills and
availability, to work on the project. If you want to see
which tasks are assigned to which profiles, use the view available
from the Work Package tab.
Figure 31. Assigning employees to a profile in a project
Helpful hints to remember
Here are some tips to keep in mind as you work with Method Composer and Portfolio Manager.
Method Composer to Portfolio Manager mapping
The XML file that is exported from Method Composer contains all
of the information available about the process, but not all of it is
yet used by Portfolio Manager. For example, while the export file contains
complete information about each task's work products, those are not
currently converted into work products in Portfolio Manager. In the future, more
Method Composer data types may be converted into Portfolio Manager artifacts. Table 1 shows
the current mapping of Method Composer elements to Portfolio Manager elements.
Table 1. Method Composer to Portfolio Manager element mapping
| Method Composer WBS element | Portfolio Manager WBS element |
|---|
| Delivery process | Summary task | | Capability pattern | Summary task | | Phase | Summary task | | Iteration | Summary task | | Activity | Summary task | | TaskDescriptor | Task | | RoleDescriptor | Profile | | Role | Competency | | Milestone | Milestone |
Elements with planned = false in Rational Method Composer 7.0.0
As we mentioned earlier, Rational Method Composer 7.0.0 has no option on the export for including
activities that have the property of planned = false. Because
many of the included plugins include content where planned = false, when they were exported, this often resulted in empty export
files. If you want to use any of the Rational Method Composer included processes as
templates in Rational Portfolio Manager, upgrading to Rational Method Composer 7.0.1 is recommended.
Effort assigned to tasks
Because there is no information in Method Composer which defined how long a
task should take, when a work breakdown structure is imported into
Portfolio Manager it will assign each task an expected and planned effort time of
one 8 hour work day. After importing, these should be adjusted in
the template to better match expected values for the process you are
importing.
Templates cannot be used at proposal creation
Even though the process template has been imported from Rational Method Composer, you
cannot use that template in LOCAL TEMPLATES at the initial
creation of the proposal, using the Adopt From field in the
Proposal properties. Instead, you must create the proposal
without a template and then copy the template elements into the
proposal using drag and drop.
Summary
In this article you developed a process using Rational Method Composer and imported it into
Rational Portfolio Manager. The examples demonstrate the capability of codifying process
artifacts, and managing those artifacts, through the project-execution
phase of a development process. These are important steps to
ultimately achieving solution lifecycle capabilities that span
business requirements, traceability to IT requirements, definition
of development artifacts, deployment of those artifacts, and more. These
are important, necessary steps for aligning corporate and IT
governance and for providing total end-to-end technology
artifact development and integration.
Resources Learn
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About the authors | 
| | Greg Smith has worked in many roles within IBM during the last 10 years,
including software development, services, and support. His most recent role was
as chief programmer for the IBM RFID product set. He is now working in the
IBM Software Group Strategy division, exploring SOA governance. Contact Greg at gregsmit@us.ibm.com. |
| 
| | John Falkl is a Senior Technical Staff Member in the IBM Software Group SOA Technical Strategy organization. He is currently leading the SWG Governance Incubation Project. John spent 12 years in IBM Global Services, where he led a number of high-impact projects, including the deployment of Lotus Notes internally within IBM; the development of a subscription-based Lotus Notes service offering; and most recently, the definition and development of an SOA management service offering for IGS. Besides John's academic credentials, he holds three industry certifications in IT technology. John has a significant background in enterprise architecture and development, as well as nine years in management. John has also participated on many IBM Academy of Technology studies and served as a core team member on several. You can reach John at jfalkl@us.ibm.com. |
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