Setting up projects for your CLM applications

What needs to be considered and done, after the servers are up and running? What are the next steps to start a new project with the Rational Collaboration For Lifecycle Management solution? This section will help with information about creating and maintaining projects in the different applications. This is the main entry point in the online help

Project areas

All the the CLM applications organize the work in project areas.To work with any of the CLM applications, you need to create a project area in the specific application. Project areas can also be used to limit read access e.g. to the members of the project area hierarchy.

Team areas

In some of the CLM applications, you can use team areas within a project area, to structure and organize work. Different CLM applications have a slightly different approach to using team areas. Rational team concert relies heavily on it. Other products often use other categories to organize and structure work.

• RTC - ToDo
• RQM - Managing teams using the Team Area in Rational Quality Manager

Project areas vs. team areas

When should you use project areas and when should you use team areas to organize the work? Read more about considerations for creating project and team areas [New Page - project areas vs team areas in different applications].

Process templates for project areas

Each project area defines its own process. Project areas are initially created using process templates which are provided by the applications. Read more about the various process templates and their properties [New Page - process templates in different applications].

The project area process

All team areas within a project area share the same process. Team areas within a project area can add new roles, set their permissions and tune the operational behavior, but the general process and its artifacts is shared across the whole hierarchy. To effectively use the CLM application it is necessary to understand the fundamental concepts each application uses in their process. See the following pages for more details on these concepts.

• Rational Team Concert Process Fundamentals
• Rational Quality Manager Process Fundamentals - coming soon
• Rational Doors Next Process Fundamentals - coming soon

Once a project area is created it is necessary to maintain the process in the project area. In many organizations some members of the project area are also administrators of their own project area. This gives the members of the project area a lot of flexibility and independence and sometimes the edge that is needed to be successful.

Once a project area is created from a process template, there is no more connection between the two. Modifying the process template does not modify the project areas process and vice versa. You can, and should, create a custom process template from a project areas process and use it for new project areas. This allows to slightly customize the standard process and get to a template that has your customization already included.

Since there is no connection between process templates and the project areas process, it is necessary to maintain the process in each project area independently. If there are a lot of project areas, it increases the administrative effort. It is also sometimes desirable to have a common process for all project areas. Some organizations use process sharing to standardize on process across multiple project areas and reduce the administrative overhead that way as well.

Process sharing

Process sharing allows to provide a standardized process and share it with multiple project areas. The project areas that want to share the process of another project area are created from the "Unconfigured Process template". They are then set to share the process of another project area.

The project area that provides its process for sharing is created using any other process template. This project area is then configured to provide its process for sharing which also makes this project area accessible by everyone. The process configuration is then provided to any project area that shares this process. Also see Managing Rational Team Concert work item changes with process sharing for more best practices.

Process sharing works across servers, so it is possible to have a CCM server just for this purpose or use it in highly distributed environments that have multiple CCM applications deployed.

Process sharing works best for Engineering Workflow Management (previously named Rational Team Concert). It can however also be used for other CLM applications. Other CLM applications just don't necessarily store all information in the process template and have different means to customize their process, but they all share a core that allows process sharing.

Process sharing can be used with Engineering Requirements Management / DOORS Next Generation. Please see this document for best practices for process sharing in ERM projects with configuration management. Process sharing for DOORS Next only works within a server, since there is currently no support to access a component on a different server.

Lifecycle projects

Although it is possible to just work with one application, for example Rational Team Concert, the Rational CLM solution provides the biggest benefits if being used across the whole lifecycle and all the roles involved. This usually requires different roles to work in different project areas provided in multiple applications. As an example the requirements engineers would work in a Rational Doors Next project area most of the time. The development team would work in Rational Team Concert and the quality team would work in Rational Quality Manager. None of these roles work in isolation and referring to artifacts in other domains is a requirement.

The CLM solution provides Lifecycle Projects in the Lifecycle Project Administration application (LPA) to support managing this. The LPA application allows to Create lifecycle projects that configure projects in multiple applications and tie them together. It is possible to create lifecycle projects and automatically create the related projects in the various applications. It is also possible to add existing project areas in multiple applications to a lifecycle project.

If your deployment topology includes multiple Jazz Team Server or Jazz application instances keep in mind that the LPA application is currently (version 6.x) only available for project areas in applications that are registered to the same JTS. If multiple instances of the same CLM application are registered to the same JTS, the LPA application only supports creating project areas in the first registered application of one kind. It is however possible to manually create a project area on any instance and add it to the lifecycle project.

Lifecycle project templates

Similar to the applications, the LPA application comes with some predefined process templates. It is possible to use the existing templates. It is also possible to manage and customize the process template for your lifecycle project. It is possible to export a template by selecting it in the template management section and clicking the export button. Once downloaded it is just an XML file. It is possible to modify the XML to adjust it and later import the modified template. This is for instance of interest if you want to use process sharing and want to use the "Unconfigured Process template" in the applications.

Related topics: Deployment web home, Deployment web home, RTC Process Fundamentals

External links:

• Process templates
• Working with process templates
• Exporting and importing process templates
• Migrating a project to a different process template
• Changing your Rational Team Concert Process Configuration - Best Practices
• Work Item Configuration and Shared Process in Rational Team Concert
• Process Enactment Workshop for the Rational solution for Collaborative Lifecycle Management 2012
• Work Item and Foundation Articles, Wikis, and Tech Notes
• Work Item Customization in Rational Team Concert
• Customizing Attributes in Rational Team Concert
• Customizing the Agile Planning tools in Rational Team Concert
• Customizing a process template for formal project management
• How to manage and customize the process template for your lifecycle project
• Cross Server Process Sharing
• Managing Rational Team Concert work item changes with process sharing

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