Setting Up Quality Gates and Assigning Project Phases

You use quality gates (Q-Gates) to indicate the end of a phase in SAP Solution Manager and to release the next phase of your project. This means that import of transport requests into the system involved in the phase is not possible until the Q-Gate immediately preceding the phase is passed

Note Note

In addition to the Q-Gates delivered by SAP, you can also specify your own Q-Gates. For more information, see Project Management Using Quality Gate Management.

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Prerequisites

You have defined projects using the project administration transaction SOLAR_PROJECT_ADMIN before defining quality gate settings.

Procedure

Access the list of projects in the Change Management work center, and choose a project. If necessary, you can use the filter options at the top of the page to limit the number of projects displayed.
Choose Set up Quality Gate Management . A guided procedure enables you to perform the steps required to maintain your project using quality gate management.

Note
If you have already entered data in project administration that is related to QGM, this data is displayed in the steps of the guided procedure. In addition, you can display detailed information for every step by choosing Expand tray in the Instructions section.

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In Step 1, Define Q-Gates and Milestones, you specify the Q-Gate and milestone data for the project.
- To specify your own milestones as Q-Gates, choose Add Milestone, enter a name for the milestone, and set the flag in the Q-Gate column.
- Enter the planned deadlines for all Q-Gates and milestones.
  
  Note
  The deadlines of the Q-Gates delivered by SAP must be in the correct sequence. For more information, see Project Management Using Quality Gate Management.
  
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- You can upload template documents for each Q-Gate. Select the row of the Q-Gate and choose Upload Template.
  
  Note
  The system administrator uploads the template documents into the system. These are documents that can be used as templates by the project team members, who can download and upload them from the Open Q-Gate window.
  
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Select Next to go to Step 2, Set Quality Manager. Here, enter the name of the quality manager and the person responsible from the quality advisory board. To do this, you have the following options:
- Select a user from the list previously maintained in project administration.
- If the user name is known, enter it directly in the field.
- Use the search function to find and enter a user.
Note
The Manager Change Log pushbutton opens a dialog box displaying any changes in either of the manager fields.

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In Step 3, Check Transport Landscape, you can display the system transport landscape(s) assigned to the project.
- If you do not select Use Central Change and Transport System Infrastructure, you have the following options:
  The logical components assigned to your project are displayed in the top section. If you select a row, the corresponding system information (system / client / system role) for each logical component is displayed in the bottom section.
  
  Note
  Only logical components that have been assigned to the project in project administration are displayed.
  
  In the Include in Project column, you can see whether the systems in a logical component assigned to the project are enabled for QGM. You can make the QGM designation in project administration (transaction SOLAR_PROJECT_ADMIN), under System Landscape Systems Change-Relevant .
  
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- If you select Use Central Change and Transport System Infrastructure, you have the following additional options. Note that information is also available in the on-screen help.
  
  Note
  For more information on the features of the central Change and Transport System, see Change Control Management Using Central Change and Transport System.
  
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  The system searches for appropriate default clusters, and assigns them. The clusters are displayed in the Systems table. If the system does not find appropriate clusters, it issues a message saying that no cluster can be found.
  
  Choose Restore Default to assign the default cluster. Choose Validate to check whether the cluster assignment is valid or not. By choosing Next, the cluster assignment is also checked for validity. The column Cluster Check displays the result of this validity check. Choose Cluster Configuration to go to the central CTS cluster configuration. Choose Reset Cluster Assignment to remove the cluster assignments.
  
  Note
  When a project has created transport requests, the cluster assignment can no longer be changed.
  
  If your system landscape has changed, the cluster assignment is automatically recovered from historical transport tracks, and this assignment cannot be changed. You can assign new clusters only to newly-added systems.
  
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In Step 4, Assign Q-Gates to System Roles, you specify which Q-Gate is to be passed for which system. When defining the logical components, each system is assigned to a system role. By connecting system roles to Q-Gates, you define which Q-Gate has to be passed before transports into the respective systems are allowed. The corresponding QGM project phases are displayed as they are related to the Q-Gates in the Phase column.
Select the Enable the Transport of Copies Import in Build Phase checkbox if you want to make importing of transports of copies possible.

Note
By default, the checkbox is not selected.

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Select the Disable Transport Release in Scope Phase checkbox if you want to prevent users from releasing transport requests when the project is in the scope phase. This checkbox is selected by default when you set up a new project
In the last step, Confirm Data, you can check whether the data entered is correct.

Note
You can only display this data graphically in the Web browser.

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If the data is correct, save your entries with Finish.

Result

Your project is now activated and ready for use in quality gate management.

Example

You have a four-tier system landscape: Development, quality, preproduction, and production systems. You have the following options:

To put the preproduction system in the test phase, assign the Test to Deploy Q-Gate to the Production System role.

To put the preproduction system in the deploy phase, assign the Test to Deploy Q-Gate to the Preproduction System role.

Caution Caution

The Q-Gates must be assigned by entering the Q-Gates sequentially for each system. The sequence is based on the dates of the Quality Gates, from the earliest date to the latest date.

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