Managing artifacts by using configurations in the RM application

You can manage changes to artifacts and work in a parallel, multi-stream environment by using configuration management capabilities. These capabilities include creating baselines of projects at specific points in time, reviewing and approving changes to artifacts, and making changes visible to other teams or individuals.

After an application administrator enables configuration management for a project area, teams can work in a parallel, multi-stream environment.

If an application administrator also installs the Global Configuration Management application, team members that are assigned as configuration leads can create global configurations and add local configurations (streams and baselines) to them.

After a configuration lead creates global configurations, when you switch to a global configuration, you can create and view links to artifacts in other RM project areas and other IBM® Engineering Lifecycle Management (ELM) project areas that support configuration management. You can also view all the artifacts that make up a version of a product or system. To work in the context of a global configuration, select the configuration that you want from the Current Configuration menu.

You can use following configuration management functions to manage the artifacts:

Select a configuration: The name of the configuration that you are working in is shown on the toolbar, as part of the Current Configuration menu. Use this menu to switch configurations and to complete configuration-related tasks, based on your permissions or role. To see and create links to artifacts in related project areas in other ELM applications, select a global configuration. For more information, see Selecting a configuration to work in.

Manage configuration details: You can open a configuration to see related configurations, manage details, compare configurations, and create local configurations. For more information, see Managing configuration details.

Create streams: A stream is modifiable set of versioned artifacts. You can add, edit, and delete versions of artifacts in a stream. All team members who have access to the project area can access its streams. For more information, see Creating streams.

Create baselines from streams: A baseline is a read-only set of artifacts and their versions. Create baselines to capture the state of a stream at a specific point in time, and to define a starting point for new work. For example, create a baseline of a stream and use it as the basis of a new stream for new work. You can create a baseline of a stream at any point during the project lifecycle, such as before or after a project milestone is reached. For more information, see Creating baselines from streams.

Compare configurations: You can compare configurations in the same project area to determine whether they contain different artifacts (identified by the URI or the name of an artifact), or different versions of the same artifacts. For example, partway through a project, you might compare a stream with its flow target to see which artifact versions are different. You can also compare collections of requirements. At the end of a project milestone, you might compare a stream with its baseline. For more information, see Comparing configurations.

Manage changes to artifacts: Create change sets to group related changes, and control where changes are delivered to. You can link change sets to work items to help identify the changes that are related to a specific purpose or problem. When you finish making changes, deliver your change set to its destination stream. If you do not use change sets, your changes to artifacts or links in a stream are available to everyone who shares the stream as soon as you save your changes. For more information, see Managing changes to artifacts.

Deliver changes to other streams: You can either deliver all the change sets or only selected change sets from one stream to another. For more information, see Delivering changes to other streams.

Accept changes from other configurations: In a collaborative development environment, you might import changes from another stream or baseline so that you can use them in the stream you work in. To import changes into a stream, you use the Accept Changes operation. For more information, see Accepting changes from other configurations.

Show and set link validity and validity summary information: Link validity is the status of links between artifacts to indicate whether the contents of two artifacts meet the intended meaning of the link between them. You can use the link validity status to achieve consistency across artifacts and links as you make changes that propagate through the linked data. For more information, see Showing and setting link validity and validity summary information.

Clone artifacts between RM components: Reorganize how artifacts are grouped in your project by cloning them from one component into another. When you clone an artifact, a new version is added to the component that you clone into. For more information, see Cloning artifacts between RM components.

Troubleshoot configurations: If you encounter errors or exceptions that are related to configuration management or local configurations, review the log file for your ELM application. Other problems can be solved by working in a global configuration context. For more information, see Troubleshooting configurations.

For more information, see the video Effectively manage changes, baselines and engineering streams with Global Configurations.