Getting started with configuration management
Configuration management capabilities in the IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management enable multi-stream development, artifact reuse, and linking to artifacts across project areas. For the Engineering Test Management and IBM DOORS® Next applications, a Jazz administrator must have an activation key. The administrator must activate this feature at the application level, and then enable individual Engineering Test Management and Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next project areas. After you enable these capabilities for a project area, you cannot disable them.
Use configuration management capabilities to create versions of artifacts and link them to other team artifacts, such as requirements and designs. Use configurations (streams and baselines) from Engineering Lifecycle Management applications to manage reuse, traceability, and parallel development. Use the Global Configuration Management application to assemble configurations into global configurations to provide a context for resolving links between versioned artifacts within and across Engineering Lifecycle Management applications.
To learn more about configuration management, watch the following videos:
Teams use their configuration management-enabled Engineering Lifecycle Management applications to contribute requirements, designs, tests, and global configurations to a larger working environment. Global configurations assemble contributed configurations in a hierarchical tree view. Use global configurations to plan and manage the reuse of configurations in the many versions or variants of your software or product line.
In the Engineering Workflow Management application, you must complete the steps to be able to link work items to versioned artifacts in Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next and Engineering Test Management project areas. For more information, see Linking work items to artifacts in configuration management-enabled project areas.
- Engineering Lifecycle Management must be installed. If your project would use global configurations, the Link Index Provider and Global Configuration Management supporting applications must also be installed.
- A Jazz administrator must complete these steps:
- Read about how activating and enabling configuration management affects project areas and other features in Engineering Lifecycle Management applications.
- Obtain an activation key:
- For pilot environments, generate an activation key using Enabling
configurations in ELM 7.1
applications.Note: The configuration management capabilities of the RM, QM, and Global Configuration Management applications are added services for IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management as SaaS and IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management SaaS customer environments and must be enabled only by the SaaS provider. The source-control management (SCM) feature in Engineering Workflow Management is included in Cloud offerings at no additional cost.
- For production environments, discuss your plans with your IBM Client representative or contact IBM Support.
- For pilot environments, generate an activation key using Enabling
configurations in ELM 7.1
applications.
- Activate configuration management in the QM, and DOORS applications.
- Project area administrators must enable configuration management for the Engineering Test Management and Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next project areas that would use it.
- After one Engineering Test Management or Engineering Requirements Management DOORS Next project area in a solution is enabled for configuration management, a Report Builder administrator must refresh the list of data sources. This action makes the Lifecycle Query Engine scoped by a configuration data source available for reporting on data in configurations. See Connecting to data sources.
To read more about local configurations, global configurations, and how to use them together, see Configurations: Global and local.
To know more details, read about Best practices for configuration management in IBM Engineering Lifecycle Management (Engineering Lifecycle Management).
- For the task: if your project links to artifacts in other Engineering Lifecycle Management applications, you must install the Link Index Provider supporting application. If you project will use global configurations, make sure you install the Link Index Provider and Global Configuration Management applications.
- For the task: this task refers to the process of understanding which development artifacts, such as code libraries, user interface, and so on, are affected by changes. In the Engineering Workflow Management application, there is no tool to run to complete this task.
