Guideline

Definition

Guideline

a convention that provides nonbinding direction, assistance, and heuristics to persons on how to perform one or more related work units

Classification

As illustrated in the preceding figure, guidelines are part of the following inheritance hierarchy:

• Type: Concrete
• Superclass: Convention
• Subclasses: None
• Example Instances:
  • Process Construction Guidelines
  • Use Case Modeling Guidelines
  • Website Design Guidelines

Responsibilities

The typical responsibilities of a guideline are to:

• Enable people to perform their tasks more efficiently and correctly.
• Improve productivity.
• Improve the quality of the associated work products.

Guidelines

• Unlike standards, guidelines are typically nonbinding. Although experience has shown them to be typically useful, people typically do not need official waivers to ignore them.
• More guidelines can be found by using the search word “guideline” in the site search webpage.