Purpose

Projects produce a variety of reusable assets that could be applied to subsequent projects, making them more efficient and faster. Examples can range from organization-specific guidance on certain artifacts through example artifacts to full models articulating a key architecture.

The RUP Organizer component of the Rational Process Workbench can be used to package these assets in such a way that they are directly attached to the activities, artifacts and roles that they are relevant to. In this way, future projects that create RUP Configurations will have explicit examples and guidance more directly pertinent to their needs available at their fingertips.

The format for this collection of useful assets is referred to as a thin plug-in. This is the simplest and fastest type of plug-in to create, allowing minimal effort to provide benefit for the most people.

This tool mentor relates to the following RUP information:


Overview

The following steps are performed in this tool mentor:

Collect available resources To top of page

First collect the assets you think you might want to share. Assets include:

  • Guidelines: additional text or diagrams that provide valuable assistance and clarity in creating a particular artifact, including standards, tailoring options and suggestions regarding formality.
  • Checkpoints: lists of questions to ask about an artifact to validate its level of maturity and quality.
  • Organizational or project standards: explicit requirements that must be met by an artifact due to external constraints, for example code standards.
  • Concept page: additional text or diagrams that address an idea or approach at a high-level to provide greater clarity and understanding of the intellectual or practical approach suggested, without explicit process statements. Usually fairly brief html documents that are closely related to a specific activity or workflow.
  • White papers: more extensive concept pages, frequently in Word or pdf format, that contain much broader and deeper process guidance.
  • Templates: documents or models with organizational structure, descriptive material but no content, ready for use by a project as the basis for an artifact or artifact set.
  • Examples: documents or models that have content as well as organizational structure that can either be used to provide greater understanding of the approach to creating an artifact from scratch, or as a pre-filled starting point for further elaboration.

At this point there is no assumption about the format of this information. It could be emails, databases, documents, spreadsheets or html. Formatting it for effective use within a RUP configuration is another step in the process.

It's very useful to collect these assets in a single file location, separated from material that will not be in the shared asset set. This enables better management of it, and is very useful for later use with RUP Organizer. We refer to a folder with content in it as a content library. RUP Organizer adds other key organizing material to it during creation of the thin plug-in.

This step is done using the normal tools available to you: email, word processor and file explorers.

Create a new thin plug-in To top of page

First, a couple of quick definitions:

  • Process base: this is an existing Modeled Plug-in or the RUP base that your new Thin Plug-in will attach to. It contains the base layout that you can attach your process assets to.
  • Layout: this is a hierarchical view of the process definition contained in a plug-in or the RUP base. In a Thin Plug-in, you can attach files to the layout of your process base or create a new folder structure separately from it. This creates an architecturally correct and complementary overlay on top of the existing process that can be added or removed as you need it.

The following steps in RUP Organizer will enable you to create a new thin plug-in for your content and point it at your content library.

  • Launch RUP Organizer from your Start menu (within Rational Software).
    A dialog box appears with a list of existing plug-ins and process bases and two choices: Create new plug-in layout and Edit existing layout.
  • Choose Create new plug-in and click OK.
    A dialog box will appear asking for the name of your thin plug-in.
  • Enter a name for your plug-in.
    The system will ask you for the location of your content library.
  • Browse to the location of the content library you created above.
    The system will display a list of existing plug-ins and the RUP base to attach your plug-in to.
  • Select a process base for your plug-in. (Usually this will be the RUP base).
    The main RUP Organizer window will appear with a content explorer for your Thin Plug-in.

Link your assets to process elements To top of page

The RUP Organizer has two main panels: a Content Explorer and a Layouts panel. The Content Explorer is just like any other file explorer, with a folder structure in the leftmost panel and a file list in the central panel. The Layouts panel has a tree-control for the layouts of the process base and your Thin Plug-in.

Clicking on your content library in the leftmost window will bring up the list of files in the central panel.

To attach an existing process asset to a process element in the process base:

  • In the Layouts panel, navigate to the process element you would like to attach something to.
  • Select the process asset in the Content Explorer and drag it onto the process element.

To create a new element in the layout, for example a new folder, right-click on the process element you would like to contain the folder and select Create Folder. Give it a name, and then you can add process assets to it.

Process assets that apply to more than one process element can be dragged over all that they apply to. For example, a modeling standard covering both sequence diagrams and class diagrams can be dragged on top of both artifact elements and would show up in both places in a published RUP Configuration containing the Thin Plug-in.

In general, you can attach different type of process assets to different kind of process elements. The list below suggests the typical asset-to-process-element attachment recomendations :

  • Guidelines: primarily to artifacts, secondarily to activities or roles.
  • Checkpoints: to artifacts or activities.
  • Organizational or project standards: to any applicable element type.
  • Concept page: first option is disciplines or workflow details, but artifacts, activities, and roles are candidates too.
  • White papers: if narrowly scoped, they can be attached to workflow details or even roles, but often these assets relates to whole disciplines.
  • Templates: to artifacts.
  • Examples: to artifacts. You might also create a folder of examples to provide a single coherent set of material that travels together, or you can attach examples to the tools that created them. For example, a Rational Rose model that you would like to use could be attached to the Rational Rose tool process element.

Optional: Convert to a RUP-like format To top of page

If you would like the content to appear in one the standard RUP formats, for example a guideline page, you can instantiate the content pages inside RUP Organizer and author these in your favorite html editor. First, a couple of new concepts:

  • Organizer Template: all of the standard page types you are used to seeing in published RUP websites have templates associated with them in RUP Organizer. These contain the headings, space for your text and embedded RPW Commands.
  • RPW Commands: an RPW command is a text string starting with "!RPW" that RUP Builder knows how to interpret when it publishes a RUP Website. RPW commands allow the dynamic generation of web-pages.

The steps:

  • Select the process element in the layout for which you would like to create a new page.
  • Choose the File > Content File > Filetype, (where Filetype is one of the supported asset types, such as Guideline, Concept, or Whitepaper).
  • When the file dialog appears, browse to the location in your content library where you want to store the new file.
  • Give your file a useful name, including the .htm extension.
  • Enter a presentation name when prompted, this will be the page title in the resulting Website as well as the node name in the tree.
    RUP Organizer will display the file in the selected location in the content library browser.
  • Drag it onto the target process element in the base layout.
  • Open the process asset in the content library browser by right-clicking on the file entry and selecting Edit (or simply double click)
    RUP Organizer will launch your default html editor with the skeletal file you just created.
  • Copy the information into the new html file from source (for example a Word document), or type in the content from scratch if no source exists. Be sure to leave the RPW commands untouched, to enable RUP Builder to publish all information related to this content file.
  • Save your file.

It is now saved in your Thin Plug-in content library and attached to the appropriate process element in the layout.

Validate Plug-in To top of page

There are a few steps in validating your Thin Plug-in:

  • Confirm an individual html file is correct: right-click on the process element in the layout and select Preview. This will run the RPW Commands and display the html screen in a browser for you to review.
  • Check Files: This command (available from the tool bar or the File menu) will traverse the entire layout, ensuring that all file attachments are correct, that Presentation Names are correct, etc.
  • Publish a configuration including the Plug-in: this is done in RUP Builder after you have exported the plug-in. This will enable you to view the plug-in fully in the context of a published RUP configuration, and have others review it as well.

Export plug-in To top of page

To make your Plug-in available for project managers to include in their projects, you must export it from RUP Organizer. This is done with the Export Plug-in button on the toolbar. You will be prompted for a location for your plug-in.

When you do this, RUP packages your layout, including overlays of the base process, and all of your content files into a single file with a .cfu extension. This is the Plug-in that can be imported into RUP Builder for inclusion in a RUP configuration.

More Information To top of page

For additional information on developing RUP plug-ins, see the Process Engineering Process (PEP). The PEP is a RUP-like process that provides guidance in the area of process engineering. It is included with the Rational Process Workbench™, available for download from the Rational Developer NetworkSM.

Refer to the RUP Organizer Online Help, for detailed information on how to use the drag & drop feature of RUP Organizer to easily link your resources to existing RUP process elements.



© Copyright IBM Corp. 1987, 2004. All Rights Reserved.

Rational Unified Process   2003.06.13