Sketching a method is all about brainstorming about what the method should contain and how it should be organized. 

Sketching is usually performed in a team environment in the context of a series of brainstorming sessions involving method SMEs.

When sketching a method, it is important to identify the key method elements and their relationships, as well as an early draft of a brief description. The key method elements may include any or all of the following:

• Key content areas, especially if the method is large (these may evolve into domains and disciplines)
• Key method content elements and their relationships: what work products are produced and what roles are responsible for them?  What work products are consumed by the process (e.g., what are the input work products)?
• Key activities: What activities are performed to produce the work products, what work products do those activities produce and consume?
• Overall lifecycle and milestones. What is the overall lifecycle that you are trying to represent, organized by key milestones and milestone criteria?

When sketching a method, it is important to leverage as much existing content as you can, both from the current context, as well as from existing methods. This is especially important if the ultimate objective is to customize an existing method for the current context.

The following describes an approach for sketching a method:

1. Identify key work products. Sometimes starting with the key work products can be easiest, as this gives you a set of terms to start working with. What are the key work products that are produced? Provide a brief description that indicates their purpose and key contents. If the work products have significant state, it is a good idea to capture that, as well. In addition to the work products that are produce by the method, it is important to identify work products that are consumed by the method. What are the inputs to the method? What is their expected contents? Can they be refined in any way, or should they be treated as input only?
2. Identify key activities. Once you have an initial list of work products, you can turn your attention to the key activities that are performed and how those activities produce/consume the work products. If they produce or refine a work product, what is the work product's resulting state after the activity is complete?
3. Identify key roles. You can also start thinking about what key roles that participate in the process, what work products they are responsible for and any key activities they participate in.
4. Outline overall lifecycle, including key milestones. Once you have an idea of the key activities, you can start to organize them into an overall lifecycle. First identify the key milestones and describe the milestone criteria in terms of the work products produced and their state. You can then map the identified activities to the milestones they support (i.e., the activities that support the reaching of the goal of the milestone). This may result in additional activities. At this point, don't worry too much about individual tasks, just capture the overall lifecycle in terms of milestones, key activities and their affect on key work products.

Applying the above approach results in a high-level definition of an end-to-end process, including work products, roles, activities, milestones and overall lifecycle.