Process patterns

Process patterns can be defined as the set of activities, actions, work tasks or work products and similar related behaviour followed in a software development life cycle.

Process patterns can be more easily understood by dividing it into terms: "Process", which means the steps followed to achieve a task and "patterns", which means the recurrence of same basic features during the lifecycle of a process. Thus in a more universal term process patterns are common or general solution for a complexity.

Typical Examples are:
 * 1) Customer communication (a process activity).
 * 2) Analysis (an action).
 * 3) Requirements gathering (a process task).
 * 4) Reviewing a work product (a process task).
 * 5) Design model (a work product).

Process Patterns can be best seen in software design cycle which involves the common stages of development. For example, a generic software design life cycles has following steps:
 * 1) Communication.
 * 2) Planning.
 * 3) Modeling which involves requirement gathering, analysis and design from business perspective.
 * 4) Development which involves code generation and testing.
 * 5) Deployment includes the code deployment and testing in the production environment.