Irreversible thermodynamics is employed as a framework to describe plastic deformation in pure metals and alloys. Expressions to describe saturation stress in single crystals and nanocrystals are employed over wide ranges of temperature, strain rate and grain size. The importance of the roles played by vacancy self-diffusion in dislocation climb and in plasticity is shown. Equations to describe the stress-strain response of single crystals and ultrafine-grained metals are derived. The activation energy for dislocation annihilation plays a central role in the mechanical response of the systems. Succinct formulations for predicting hot deformation behaviour and relaxation of industrial alloys are presented; the influence of composition in the activation energy for dislocation annihilation is shown. All formulations describing stress-strain relationships can be reduced to Kocks-Mecking classical formulation, but incorporating grain size and compositional effects. The importance of the recovery term in such formulation is established, as well as the need to obtain it employing more fundamental approaches.