How this site is structured

Introduction	The purpose of this page is to explain the main building blocks used on this site. Below is a diagram showing the various building block and their relationship, click a building block to get further information about it: The four columns describe different properties for the buildings blocks. The “support” column hold the building blocks that are shared between the three other columns building blocks. The “Management and Subject Matter Expert” columns are addressing their subject at a high level of abstraction – the “What” level. The “Experienced User” are addressing the “How to” at a level appropriate for the experienced user and the last column “Novice user” are addressing “How to” details for a user who only perform the activity occasional.
Policy	The formal definition of policy is “a way of doing something that has been officially agreed and chosen by a political party, a business, or another organization”. In the context of this site policy is the very high level definition of what the organisation have decided to do in a certain area of the business. The policy serves as guideline giving the direction for how work shall be performed.
Definition of Term	Many terms, abbreviations and words can have a number of different meanings depending on the culture,context, traditions, etc. The “Definition of Term” are therefore used here to define the meaning of a specific term or word as it is used on this site. Example: the abbreviation ATM means “Automatic Teller Machine” if you are in the financial sector, whereas it mean “Asynchronous Transmission Mode” if you are in the telecommunication industry.
Tailoring Guidelines	“One size fit all” is seldom the case, but making changes to the size at random have the potential to destroy the original purpose of the process. The purpose of the tailoring guidelines is to provide directions for how the processes can be tailored to a specific purpose or when process steps might not be necessary in order to obtain the benefit of the process. Example: A user requirement specification will typically have activities for identifying different kind of requirement. If a specific type of requirement is not relevant then the tailoring guideline describe what it is allowed to omit from the specification and how to indicate that is on purpose these sections are left out.
Templates	A template is typically a document framework ensuring a same type, e.g. a user requirement specification, a project plan or a accounting sheet. The benefit of using the template is that the same type of information will always be in the same sections of the document and the order of sections will be the same. This makes it easier to navigate the document and find a specific information – if at all relevant for the document.
Checklists	A checklist is list of topics to consider when creating or examining a subject in a review. Checklists are typically based on good engineering practice and experience from previous performance of activities which the organisation either want to make sure are happening every time an activity is performed or never to happen again – e.g. design flaws or missing entire groups of requirements. Checklist ae dynamic by nature and should be updated when new knowledge get available or when some check does not make sense anymore, e.g. checking for a specific error that for a long time has not materialised because the user now by routine prevent it from happening.
Training Material	Training material can be a number of things: A set of slides, a video, podcast or a written text. The purpose of the training material is to provide the user guidance to learn the topic of the training material, e.g. training material for review will introduce the concept of the review process and provide elaborated description and examples on how to plan, conduct and close a review.
Process	The purpose of the process is to provide a high level description of an activity and the main steps of the activity. Due to the level of abstraction the process level are suitable for two main groups. Management, who need an basic understanding of the activities in the organisation, but do not need operational level details. Subject Matter Experts who already have an operational level of understanding of the activities, and therefore only need a kind “reminder” about the steps to be performed. The process has 8 main sections: Introduction Who will participate? What is the input? Which tasks are expected? How is the result controlled? What is the outputs? When to exit? Hints & Examples Beside these one or more sections can be included in the process description as required.
Sub-Process	The Sub-process addresses the experienced user. It typically will elaborate one step at the process level, by adding operational details, making it easier for the experienced user to perform the activities in a effective and efficient way. The sub-process has a lot of structure in common with the process.
Function	The function is addressing the novice user or the user who do not routinely perform the activities. The function provides further operational details about how the activities can be performed and possible tools to use for support of the activity.