Design and Management of a Digital Process Asset Library (PAL)

Keywords: digital library design; information space design; information architecture; website usability; document design; document usability; content management; single-source publishing; process improvement; process documentation.

The tutorial addresses the design and management of a digital Process Asset Library (PAL).

An organizational PAL, containing process documents and related artifacts, is recommended by the CMMI® model (a set of best practices for product/service development/maintenance and widely used as a basis for process appraisal). The SPICE framework also has a similar concept, the process repository.

The design and management of a digital PAL involve multiple areas of expertise, including:

• Systems/software engineering, for the development and maintenance of an interactive system.
• Digital library and website design (including information architecture and user interface design) and administration.
• Document design and usability; hypertext design.
• Content management, including single-source publishing.
• Process engineering and process improvement.

There is a lack of guidance covering the topic as a whole so that some organizations may not fully appreciate what is needed for effective PAL design and management. As a result, in spite of large expenditures on PAL development, organizational PALs may not support productive and effective use of process assets (particularly at the level of practical work) and/or their administration may not be cost effective.

This tutorial seeks to provide an appreciation for the expertise/skills needed and issues involved in PAL design/management.

The tutorial presentation is organized as follows:

• Introduction to the PAL Concept.
• Tutorial Scope and Motivation.
• Expertise Areas Relevant to Digital PAL Design and Management: An Overview.

The following additional material is available in the handouts and some of it may be covered during the tutorial:

• References & Resources.
• Appendices:
• A. Guidance/Plan for Developing a PAL.
• B. Process Engineering & Management (PEM).

• Members of organizational process improvement groups.
• Teams engaged in the following and their managers:
• Planning, design, or administration of a digital PAL.
• Designing process assets that will reside in a PAL.
• Project managers planning a project digital environment and deployment of project process assets (tailored from the organizational PAL).
• Teams who may want to gauge and improve the effectiveness of an organizational PAL.
• Additionally, teams engaged in design of organizational intranets, portals, and knowledge repositories.

Nuzhat Haneef
  Nuzi Haneef is a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Lockheed Martin, currently on the staff of an Engineering Process, Measures, & Tools Center of Excellence. During her career at Lockheed Martin, she has had extensive process improvement experience, including participating in the design and development of different company PALs or PAL components, leading a Process Technology Group, supporting several process appraisals, developing numerous process documents, working on a company Process Architecture Team, and designing a web application for process assessments. Nuzi has also worked for IBM and AT&T Bell Laboratories.
Nuzi has an MS in Computer Science (1980) from the University of Kansas and a PhD in Computer Science from George Washington University (2009). Her PhD research was in the area of user interface design and information product design.
Some of Nuzi’s talks and papers, relevant to process engineering and PAL design, are:

• Haneef, N. "Generic Database Model for the CMMI® and Similar Structures", SEPG 2003 (Software Engineering Process Group Conference). February 2003, Boston, MA.
• Heller, R. S., Martin, C. D., Haneef, N., and Gievska-Krliu, S. "Using a Theoretical Multimedia Taxonomy Framework". ACM Journal of Educational Resources in Computing, vol. 1, no. 1, Spring 2001, Article No. 6.
• Haneef, N. "A Generic Model of Process Management", SEPG 1996. May 1996, Atlantic City, NJ.