Extension page creation

After an extension point has been identified, the process engineer creates an extension page for this extension point. The purpose of this extension page is to provide up-to-date guidance in addition to the contents of the static method. The extension page contains two areas:

• Collaborative guidance content area
• Dynamic content area

Collaborative guidance area

The collaborative guidance content area provides up-to-date guidance on the method for this extension point. Typically the initial content in this page is populated by another process engineer skilled in the art of this particular extension point. The content in this area can be, for example, the latest information on tools and how to obtain them, and then used to execute this extension point more effectively. This collaborative area is also editable by the user (practitioner or architect) to allow for field-based lessons and input to be captured, thus keeping the best practices and fieldbased lessons learned about this extension point up to date. An example of a Web 2.0 implementation of this collaborative guidance area is a wiki.

Dynamic content area

The dynamic content area dynamically provides assets and artifacts to the user or practitioner to help him or her execute the task described by this extension point. The kinds of assets and artifacts can include social bookmarks; subject matter experts (including their instant messaging statuses); documents; publications; presentations; media-rich syndicated content, such as podcasts and movies; and education materials, including blogs, online course material, and classes. Because the information in this area is dynamic, the system builds content at the time the practitioner requests the page so that he or she is always guaranteed of the latest information. An example of a Web 2.0 implementation of this dynamic content area is aggregated Web feeds.

The static method process engineer repeats the creation of extension pages for each extension point identified in the static method.

By adopting this technique for creating a method, the dynamic content is automatically built when a user requests a specific page and includes information from many different sources outside of the core method contents. This dynamic content can be provided by practitioners, not just method authors (process engineers). This dynamic content is accessible from the method, not scattered over the Internet or intranet.

Figure 2 illustrates where method contents are located (topology view). It's best to read the comments from bottom to top, starting from the consultant's local machine.