IBM Practices are geared toward Agile development teams, and include guidance on how to adopt each practice and customizable assets to get you started. Each practice can be adopted on its own, or in concert with other practices.
Each practice targets specific business objectives, such as time-to-market or increased productivity. Selecting a practice to adopt is as simple as deciding what business objectives you want to address.
The IBM Practices are designed to be tool-independent: They do not require that you use Rational software. However, Rational software products are designed to promote and support IBM Practice adoption. In relevant places in Rational product help, you will find references and links to information about corresponding practices. Follow the links to learn more about how adopting particular practices can improve your development and delivery.
An important attribute of the IBM Practices is that they produce continuous, measurable improvements. The IBM Rational Measured Capability Improvement Framework (MCIF) is based on our extensive experience in helping businesses get better results. You can use MCIF to plan specific improvements, adopt practices, and measure results.