Engineering Change Lifecycle

The lifecycle of an engineering change consists of the states shown below.

The Engineering change lifecycle includes these states:

Submit

In the Submit state, any user can submit an engineering change. The policy definition drives the roles that have Create access. When the engineering change is promoted to the Evaluate state, a trigger is fired notifying the Product Manager who owns the product of the newly created engineering change.

The EC owner can perform following tasks:


  • add assignees
  • add impact analyses
  • add affected items
  • close or reject the engineering change after specifying mandatory closing comments.
  • connect a distribution list, approval list and a review list.
  • modify attributes.

Assignees can perform following tasks:


  • add impact analyses
  • add affected items
  • modify attributes except Change Owner

Evaluate

In the Evaluate state, a Software CCB Coordinator, System Transition Manager, or System Conversion Manager evaluates the engineering change. Triggers are fired when promoting from this state to:


  • ensure that the engineering change has been assigned to a person
  • ensure that an impact analysis has been done
  • notify CCB Board members of their assignment.

When promoted from Evaluate to Review, a state-based route is created based on the selected route template; if a route template is not selected, a default route is created that does not contain any tasks. You must add tasks/assignees to that route so that a review process can be performed.

Review

A state-based route is created in the previous state based on the selected route template for the Reviewers List. The tasks are performed based on the template defined as the base template. If a template is not selected, then a default route is created without any tasks or persons. You must add tasks/assignees to that route so that a review process can be performed. See Working with Routes and Working with Tasks for details on routes and tasks.

Approved

Upon entering this state, the EC owner is notified that the EC has been approved for implementation. The EC owner, together with the assigned team, begin to plan the implementation tasks. The EC owner reviews the reviewer comments and can add additional assignees.

Implement

In this state, assignees can make changes to the related implemented items. The assignee and EC owner have access to add additional implemented items.

Validate

Depending on the Force Validation attribute, test cases (at least one) need to be related to the EC. If the Force Validation attribute is "Yes," then upon entering the Validate state, the related test cases must be executed, that is, the Percentage Passed attribute of the last completed test execution object should be 100%. The default setting is No.

The Quality Engineer assigned to the EC is now responsible for validating the fixes and promoting the EC to Formal Approval. The QE assignee can demote an EC back to the Implement state.

When promoted from Validate to Formal Approval, a state-based route is created based on the selected route template for the Approval List; if a route template is not selected, a default route is created that does not contain any tasks. You must add tasks/assignees to that route so that an approval process can be performed.

Formal Approval

Upon entering this state, the route created on promotion from the previous state (based on the selected approval list) is created. If a template is not selected, then a default route is created without any tasks or persons. You must add tasks/assignees to that route so that an approval process can be performed.See Working with Routes and Working with Tasks for details on routes and tasks.

When all the route participants complete their tasks, the route is automatically promoted to the Complete state. The Route object promotes the EC.

Complete

Upon completion of the EC, all notifications are made, the float on release activities take place, and the EC is complete.

Close

The EC owner or anyone from the approval list can promote the EC to the Close state from any state except Complete and Reject. EC owners and distribution list members will be notified. While promoting an EC to this state, the user is forced to enter a "close reason" comment. This forced entry of a comment is a configurable setting.

Reject

The EC owner or anyone from the approval list can reject an EC from any state except Complete and Close. On rejecting an EC, a notification is sent to the distribution list and EC owner. While promoting an EC to this state, the user is forced to enter a "rejection reason". This forced entry of a comment is a configurable setting.