Controlling changes by enforcing change sets and links to work items in the RM application

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To control changes to requirements artifacts, you can require team members to create change sets to deliver their changes. To prevent the delivery of unauthorized changes, you can also require team members to link change sets to an approved change request or work item before they can deliver their changes. You might enable these constraints when requirements become more defined, or closer to the end of a milestone, to control the changes to the stream.

Before you begin

  • A Jazz® Team Server administrator must enable configuration management for the project.
  • You must be a configuration lead or have permission to modify (rename) streams.

About this task

A change set is a collection of related modifications to artifacts. Create change sets to group changes to multiple artifacts, and easily identify your changes so you can identify what to deliver to other streams. When you enforce their use, team members must manually create a change set before they can make changes. Enforcing the use of changes sets helps control the delivery of changes to and across streams.

If you do not manually create change sets, each time that you save your changes to an artifact or link, the application creates and delivers a change set automatically, and your changes are available immediately to other team members who share the stream. These system-generated change sets include changes to only one artifact. Even though working this way is simple, it can be harder to identify and deliver specific change sets to other streams.

By enforcing team members to link change sets to approved change requests or work items, they cannot deliver changes until the linked work item is approved (as defined by the application that manages work items). Changes to the stream are controlled, and only authorized changes are delivered. Any change set delivered into the current stream, such as change sets created from this stream, and changes that are delivered from another stream into this stream, must be linked to at least one work item.
Note: To further control changes in streams, assign permission to deliver change sets to only those team members who need it.

The governance of your project or organization determines when you enable these options. For example, at the start of a project or release you might not enable them so that team members can easily deliver many changes. Toward the end of a milestone or release, you might enforce change sets and linking to approved requests so that only authorized changes are delivered.

Procedure

  1. Complete one of the following steps:
    • If you are already working in the stream to enforce the change sets in, on the toolbar, click Current Configuration > Local Configuration > stream name
    • Click Administration Administration menu > Manage Components and Configurations and click a stream name.
      Tip: To go to a stream in another component, click the Browse Components breadcrumb link and click a stream name.
  2. In the stream editor, on the Details tab, select the following change management constraints to enforce.
    1. To edit this stream, changes must be made in a change set, for change set requirement.
    2. To deliver to this stream, change sets must be linked to an approved change request or work item, for the requirement to associate change sets to at least one approved work item.
    By default, streams created from this stream inherit these settings. You can change the settings in the child stream at any time.

Results

For team members to link change sets to an approved change request or work item:
  • The work item must be in a project area that is configured to work with the project area that the team member works in.
  • The work item must be approved.
  • When team members deliver change sets, they see only the ones that are linked to approved work items.
  • A change set can be linked to multiple approved work items. Team members are allowed to deliver a change set even if it is associated to at least one approved work item.
  • All dependent change sets must also be linked to an approved work item. For example, a team member wants to deliver Change Set 1, which is linked to Work Item 1. That change set depends on Change Set 4, which is not linked to a work item. Change Set 1 cannot be delivered until Change Set 4 is linked to an approved work item.