Can Inheritance be part of a Lifecycle Project ?
We are using a Lifecycle Project for the traceability among RTC/RRC/RQM and we are using inheritance for ease of upgrade of the highly customized process template, at least that is as far as I can see: We only have one project area, the child project area which inherits from a dummy master project area. Our child/consumer project area is in the Lifecycle project and presumably created new from within that Lifecycle project.
I was not with the project from the start, so I am quite puzzled with how the combination works:
- An Unconfigured Process template is to be used for the child/consumer project area, yet if the project area for Change Management is created through a Lifecycle project, only 3 process templates (at least for the version 4.0.1 here) available (Scrum, OpenUp, Formal Project Management):
- Is there a way to import the Unconfigured Process Template into the Life Cycle Project ?
- Should the CM project area be created from an existing process-shared child/consumer project area ?
- Or just pick one of the 3 available templates and tweak the child PA for inheritance ? In this case, what would the impact be? Scrum was picked on our DEV server and OpenUp was picked on our PRD server; and I am unaware of the tweaks if any. Wonder if that was the cause of the broken inheritance:
- Would the tweak be removing everything within the "project configuration" frame (see below, I was trained to remove the empty "project configuration" frame from the XML for an Unconfigured process on the Proj. config. source tab), including the frame, from the child project config source ?
- Or Lifecycle project and Inheritance are not compatible with each other ?
- Not sure if it is still the same now: I was trained to remove the empty "project configuration" frame from the XML for an Unconfigured process on the Proj. config. source tab of the child PA (otherwise there would be no inheritance) and also to copy the full "team configuration" frame from the parent to the inherited child, as team config is not inherited:
- If that is (still) true, then does it matter which process template is used for the child/consumer PA ?
- Maybe this is a dumb question: Should the master or child PA be included in the Lifecycle project ? Or Both ? Is there a way to include 2 CM PA's in 1 Lifecycle project ?
One answer
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Is there a way to import the Unconfigured Process Template into the Life Cycle Project ?
--> Yes, but when you export from CCM, the process template is a ZIP, and the lifecycle import requires an XML file. You would need to merge the XML files from the ZIP into a single XML file for Lifecycle. In this case, manual merging is the only option and can be time consuming.
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Should the CM project area be created from an existing process-shared child/consumer project area ?
-->This is what I would suggest. Create a seperate CCM project area which is inheriting the process from your master. When you create the lifecycle project, link to the existing CCM project area instead of creating a new one.
- Or just pick one of the 3 available templates and tweak the child PA for inheritance ? In this case, what would the impact be? Scrum was picked on our DEV server and OpenUp was picked on our PRD server; and I am unaware of the tweaks if any. Wonder if that was the cause of the broken inheritance:
-
Would the tweak be removing everything within the "project configuration" frame (see below, I was trained to remove the empty "project configuration" frame from the XML for an Unconfigured process on the Proj. config. source tab), including the frame, from the child project config source ?
--> This may work. The only problem is that if your Master process configuration allows for overwrite of certain features, the inheriting project area may have those areas configured, and thus not inherit the process in its entirety. When process sharing, you typically want to use the unconfigured process template to ensure this does not happen.
Also, keep in mind that once a project area is created with a template, this should not be changed to a different process template as it may impact any of your work - work items, plans etc. if they do not match the new process configuration.
- Not sure if it is still the same now: I was trained to remove the empty "project configuration" frame from the XML for an Unconfigured process on the Proj. config. source tab of the child PA (otherwise there would be no inheritance) and also to copy the full "team configuration" frame from the parent to the inherited child, as team config is not inherited:
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If that is (still) true, then does it matter which process template is used for the child/consumer PA ?
---> We typically don't recommend editing the XML source directly as it may have adverse effects on your process configuration. That being said, if you copied the configuration from the master to the child, you can use the child as the 'Master config', (and you don't need to inherit). Just keep in mind that if any other project areas inherit from the original master you still need to make the changes there, and this may impact your new project area if it is no longer inheriting.
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Maybe this is a dumb question: Should the master or child PA be included in the Lifecycle project ? Or Both ? Is there a way to include 2 CM PA's in 1 Lifecycle project ?
--> I would include only the child PA, since this is the one that will have the dependancies/linkages with the other CLM applications.
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