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  <mainDescription>&lt;p>
    A&amp;nbsp; practice a documented approach to solving one or several commonly occurring problems. Practices are intended as
    &quot;chunks&quot; of process for adoption, enablement, and configuration. Practices are built from the basic method
    elements.&amp;nbsp; Practices can be informally document through one white paper, or formally documented through a
    combination of training courses, tutorials, process content, redbooks, etc.&amp;nbsp; Practices provide one-stop-shopping
    for relevant content
&lt;/p>
&lt;h3>
    Why Practices?
&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>
    Practices enable a new approach to building methods - practice composition.
&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
    This approach offers the following benefits:
&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
    &lt;li>
        Focused on business results
    &lt;/li>
    &lt;li>
        Reusability, adaptability and scalability
    &lt;/li>
    &lt;li>
        Incremental adoption
    &lt;/li>
    &lt;li>
        Easy to configure and use
    &lt;/li>
    &lt;li>
        Community development
    &lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h3>
    Focused on Business Results
&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>
    Practices &lt;em>&lt;strong>focus on results&lt;/strong>&lt;/em> (provided capabilities and resulting work products). They
    translate ideas into action and deliver high value. Practices are refined based on experiences and lessons learned
    (&quot;practice makes perfect!&quot;).&amp;nbsp; Practices focus on what matters (e.g., what practices should we use to meet our
    business objectives vs what process is &quot;best&quot;).
&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
    A practice has a &lt;strong>&lt;em>positive impact on one or several business objectives&lt;/em>&lt;/strong> (e.g., Time-to-Market,
    Improve Quality, Increase Innovation, etc.).&amp;nbsp; The adoption of a practice, and it's impact on business objectives,
    can be effectively &lt;em>&lt;strong>measured&lt;/strong>.&lt;/em>&lt;br />
&lt;/p>
&lt;h3>
    Reusability, Adaptability and Scalability
&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>
    A practice is a &lt;strong>&lt;em>reusable&lt;/em>&lt;/strong> and &lt;strong>&lt;em>scalable&lt;/em>&lt;/strong> process package that&amp;nbsp;may
    be general, domain-specific, technique-specific, organization-specific, etc. Practices can be extended/enhanced by
    other practices and/or techniques.&amp;nbsp; Practices can be adapted to&amp;nbsp;support a range of solutions.&amp;nbsp;In
    particular, practices can be adapted to suit your organization and supplemented by your own practices.
&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
    The core practices are the open source EPF Practices.&amp;nbsp;These practices are based on a common framework that allows
    them to be composed.&amp;nbsp; The core practices&amp;nbsp;are tool-agnostic, low-ceremony practices that can be extended to
    address a broad variety of development concerns, such as SOA, geographical distribution, model-driven architecture and
    embedded systems. Tool and technology specific guidance can be added, such as guidance on J2EE, and a variety of
    development tools. Some of these extensions can be quite modest, adding&amp;nbsp;for example&amp;nbsp;just tool specific
    guidance to existing tasks, while others can be comprehensive, defining processes that provide a radically expanded
    scope with new or altered artifacts, new or altered tasks, and new or altered roles.
&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
    Extensions and additions to&amp;nbsp;the practices&amp;nbsp;can be:
&lt;/p>
&lt;ul>
    &lt;li>
        used internally by an organization
    &lt;/li>
    &lt;li>
        open sourced as a part of the EPF project
    &lt;/li>
    &lt;li>
        sold commercially as an extension to the basic framework, such as the IBM(R) Practices.
    &lt;/li>
&lt;/ul>
&lt;h3>
    Incremental Adoption
&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>
    A practice is a component or aspect of a process that can be &lt;strong>&lt;em>adopted independently&lt;/em>&lt;/strong>
    &lt;strong>&lt;em>and incrementally&lt;/em>&lt;/strong> by an organization to build an organizational capability. Practices support
    easier adoption of lighter processes.&amp;nbsp; Organizations only use what they really need. They can adopt one or a few
    practice at a time and/or adopt a practice at higher levels over time (evolutionary and incremental
    adoption).&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
    Incremental adoption is supported by the&amp;nbsp;fact that&amp;nbsp;each practice is described as a standalone
    capability&amp;nbsp;and&amp;nbsp;provides one-stop-shopping for all collateral related to the practice -- e.g.,&amp;nbsp; courses,
    tool features, services, articles, process content, enactment, etc.&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/p>
&lt;h3>
    Easy to Configure and Use
&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>
    Practices are designed to be &lt;strong>&lt;em>interchangeable&lt;/em>&lt;/strong>, they may be mixed and matched or swapped out
    for alternative practices. Practice-based techniques recognize that &quot;one-size fits all&quot; is too limiting for
    processes.&amp;nbsp; Practices allow alternatives.&amp;nbsp; Creating a method is as simple as selecting the practices that you
    wish to adopt, and then publishing the results.&amp;nbsp;Each practice adds itself into the framework so that content can
    be viewed by practice, or across practices by work product, role, task and so on.
&lt;/p>
&lt;h3>
    Community Development
&lt;/h3>
&lt;p>
    Since a practice can be easily authored on its own, practices are ideal for community development.&amp;nbsp;The basic agile
    practices for the&amp;nbsp;EPF Practices are, in fact, developed by the Eclipse Process Framework community.&amp;nbsp;
&lt;/p>
&lt;p>
    Practices enable a&amp;nbsp;richer eco-system as it is easier to develop an individual&amp;nbsp;practice than to author an
    entire method.
&lt;/p></mainDescription>
</org.eclipse.epf.uma:ContentDescription>
