Introduction

Issue: THX-1 by Tom Hendrix (04-05-06) [minor_technical, closed] - {Type = introduction}
"STEP has traditionally only allowed properties to be assigned to products." may be a little misleading. Suggest change to something like: STEP has traditionally only assigned properties to products. The STEP capability to assign properties to activities has not been exploited before PLCS (THX: I dont really even know if this is true.)
Comment: (IanBailey 04-05-10)
Fixed in line with Tom's comments

This capability describes how properties are assigned to processes, e.g. entity instances of Activity, Activity_method, Condition, and Resource, including their subtypes and some of their relationships.

A property is the definition of a characteristic of something. It may reflect physics or arbitrary user defined measurements.

Properties can be assigned to products, documents, requirements, activities, and resources (e.g. required resources, managed resources), among other things.

The purpose of the "Assigning Properties to Processes" capability is to describe how properties are assigned to activities (planned and actual), activity_methods (e.g. task definitions, business processes, project plan elements, etc.), resource events and assignments, conditions, etc. The full list is defined by the select type characterized_activity_definition:

Activity
Activity_method
Activity_method_relationship
Condition
Condition_evaluation
Condition_relationship
Required_resource_assignment
Resource_as_realized_assignment
Resource_event
Resource_item_assignment
Task_objective
Work_output

EXAMPLE assigning properties to task_methods, such as "duration"

EXAMPLE assigning properties to scheme entries, such as "elapsed man-days"

In order to give those properties values, the capabilities C079: representing_properties_numerically, C084: representing_property_value_ranges, and C080: representing_properties_textually should be used.

NOTE Properties can also be assigned to resources and products. Details are provided in: C078: assigning_resource_properties and C076: assigning_product_properties respectively.