1. Invite key team members to discuss proposed environment.

2. Review information available.

Review the vision and objectives.  Review Backlog content and priorities and identify the teams involved.

Topics to discuss include:

• timelines
• project areas / team areas needed
• roles/permissions (if different than the standard SAFe template)
• any other unique configuration requirements for this program.

Vision and objective for each program may be accessible from existing portfolio and/or solution dashboards.

1. Create a new project area.

The process template preconfigures the project area with a default timeline, work item types, dashboards, and so on.

Note that this project area is just for the Solution; the Programs are in other project areas.

Follow these instructions: Creating a project area, using the desired SAFe template.

1.  Post Project Initialization Task

A task entitled Post Project Initialization is created when the project area is created.  You can use this task to track your progress configuring the program and team areas.

You can find a link to the post project initialization task on the program dashboard.

See Accessing project and team dashboards.

2. Add members to the project and assign appropriate process roles

After you create the project area, scroll to the Members section and assign process roles to members to ensure that they have the permissions required to work on project area artifacts.

As a minimum, someone should be assigned to the Solution Train Engineer role.

Adding and modifying users as members of project areas and team areas 

Adding and modifying roles and permissions

3. Define categories

Categories are used to group work items. By default, a category for the program "Solution Name <rename>" is created. 

Rename and add additional categories as needed.

Defining categories that work items can be filed against

1. Go to Plans > All Plans on the web browser
2. Rename the backlog names to desired names

5. (Optional) Create and Assign Work Items

Now that you have a project area defined, you can create and assign work items.

Use the work item templates to create standard work items.

Creating work items from a template  

6. Define project timelines

When the project area was created, a default timeline was created.

Update the start and end dates for the first release to be correct for your project.

Add additional Iterations for each Increment to the timeline as needed for the first release.

Update the start and end dates of each Iteration to match your preferred Increment duration.

It is good practice to avoid any gaps between start and end of a timeline. If gaps should exist and work items are completed during such a gap, the burndown charts would not be able to catch this and would thus be broken.

By default, there will not be gaps, because iterations will start at 12.00 AM and end at 11.59 PM.

1. Click the Administration  icon and select Manage This Project Area.  See Logging in for project administrators and team leads.
2. Select Timelines from the left pane.
3. Select each of the timelines, click Edit Properties, and rename to match your particular program.
4. For each PI and Sprint timeline, change the start and end dates to match your program's PIs.

For more information see Setting up timelines, iterations, and team areas.

To create iterations, see Creating timelines and iterations.

1. Set the current iteration by clicking the Set Current Iteration button.

7. Update views

Projects may refine the content and organization of different views.

Changing plan configuration settings for a project

1. Create or rename existing Team Areas

The structure of the program teams is defined by a hierarchy of team areas. Several cross-functional teams can work in the same project area.

Customize/Create a team area for each team on the program (project).  The template provides a default dashboard that will be customized in later steps.

To Customize the Team Area:

1. Click the Administration  icon and select Manage This Project Area. See Logging in for project administrators and team leads . 
2. For the first two teams in the program, rename the team areas that were created by default.
   I n the Team Area Hierarchy area, select "Team 1 (rename)" and/or "Team 2 (rename)" and edit the names. Save Project Area.

To create a team area see Creating a team area .

2. Create or rename Categories and Associate with Project / Team Areas

Categories are used to group work items by code area, project component, or area of focus. Since different teams work on different code areas each team must have at least one category. Additional categories are optional.

Customize subcategories of the project area category, one or more categories for each team. Assign each category to the appropriate team.  If you assign a parent category to a team, the child categories are inherited by that team automatically.

Customize Categories:

1. Click the Administration  icon and select Manage This Project Area. See Logging in for project administrators and team leads .
2. Select Categories in the left pane. Notice that by default there is a category for the program and two sub-categories "Tream 1 (rename)" and "Team 2 (rename)".
3. Double click a team category to rename it.
4. Click the link to the right of each team category to associate a team area.  Click the team area and then click the Associate button.
5. Save your changes. 

Create Categories:

1. To add a new Category, in the Actions column, click the  then Add Category. Provide the Program name. Click OK.
2. Repeat this process, clicking the  then Add Category in the Actions column to add categories for each of your teams.
3. Click the link to the right of the category to associate a team area.  Click the team area and then click the Associate button. 
4. Save your changes.  

You can now map work items to Team Areas by setting the Filed Against attribute to a category.   For more information see: Defining categories that work items can be filed against .

3. Invite team members

Add members to the teams with their respective roles.  Send invitations - Engineering Workflow Management will generate email with steps on how to join the newly created project area.

4. Customize queries for the team

Copy existing project queries and add a team area condition to create team-specific queries, replacing <team> with the name of your team.  Examples:

• Stories that need story points – <team name>

The Engineering Workflow Management Eclipse client supports some additional capabilities that are not available in the web client (e.g., delivering code changes, requesting new builds, importing work items).

Generally, non-software developers do not need the Eclipse client (the web client contains all the features they need). However, importing existing work into the backlog is a popular way to start a new project and that functionality is only available in the EWM Eclipse client.

Connect to the project area following the instructions in your invitation email (sent out in an earlier step).

Installing Engineering Workflow Management clients

Connecting the Engineering Workflow Management Eclipse client to the server