There has been a significant improvement in the Quality Gate Management area in SP10 which did not make it to headlines as other features did. In SP10, QGM has been armed with Urgent Change concept and I took time today to explore this new feature. As we all aware Urgent Change has been part of ChaRM framework since long time and now in SP10 we can use this feature in QGM also.
What does this mean to Projects?
Earlier in the QGM we had only one type of Change Request which is "QGM Change Request". The movement or TRs inside a Change Request was strictly governed by the Milestone or Q Gates. But there were scenarios where, if you used QGM for a maintenance projects then if something had to be fixed in Production at the earliest, then it has to wait till the all the Q gates are passed. But in SP10, you need not wait untill all Q gates are passed, "if something needs to be fixed in Production urgently then it will be fixed urgently"
How does Urgent Change in QGM work in SP10?
In the QGM projects while creating a Change Request, you get an option to create a Change Request of type "Urgent Change" as shown below;
Once the Urgent Change Request is created it will be in a status "To be Approved". This needs to be approved by the Quality Manager and Quality Advisory Board. Once approved, now you can create a Transport Request under this Urgent Change Request.
The Urgent Change Request and Transport Request can be imported into Production system even if Q Gates/Milestones leading to Production system are in stage "Initial".
In above example , if I had tried to import a normal QGM Change Request and its TR to Quality/PreProd/Prod then I would get the following error;
However Urgent Change Request would sail pass this barricade smoothly and correction would be imported into Production system on priority.
Can we make use of Urgent Change Request in existing project after upgrade to SP10?
I tested this part and got to know that you can not make use of Urgent Change Requests in already running QGM Projects soon after upgrade to SP10. If you create a new QGM project in SP10 then this feature would be available by default.
Existing QGM Project would continue to have following option
New QGM Projects
Cheers,
Vivek