Introduction
Today, most organizations have multiple system landscapes that frequently change. It is often difficult to keep track of these software changes. Imagine a tool capable of tracking system changes and generating a detailed report that covers all the changes happening in the landscape: Quality Gate Management is that tool.
Quality Gate Management, which is included in SAP Solution Manager 7.0 enhancement package 1, helps you achieve a full overview of all changes implemented in your company’s system landscape. It provides a detailed report covering all the changes that occur across the landscape, including information such as the change owner and source system. Within Quality Gate Management, quality gates control the change flow across the system landscape, which helps your company maintain change transparency.
You can use this tool during a project implementation to keep track of the frequent changes happening in the system. You can even create particular milestones per your project’s specifications and deadlines. The quality gates are monitored by the quality manager and a quality advisory board (which can be one individual or multiple people) who are responsible for moving changes across the system landscape so that only correct and required changes will go to the production system.
In this blog I will give you the prerequisites and configuration steps involved in change control with Quality Gate Management under three sections. The first section covers about pre requesties, project creation, projects phases in Qgate. The second section discusses about Maintaining and configuration, different views of Quality gate in the project. The third section gives you picture of how we can control changes effectively with Qgates.
Section I
Pre requesties
The prerequisites for setting-up quality gate management are:
- Creation of a project in the Project Administration and enter required data in Quality Gate Management.
- Assignment of quality gate management roles.
- Configuration of the system landscape in the Transport Management (TMS).
Create New Project
Create a implementation project in the project administration (transaction SOLAR_PROJECT_ADMIN).
Give a valid name for your implementation project.
Roles in Quality Gate Management
1) The following roles involved in Quality Gate Management:
- Quality manager : Makes one of the the two status assignments in Quality Gate Management.
- The quality advisory board : A group of project team members who are responsible for the quality of the customer system landscape.
2) The following users should be created and the corresponding roles need to be assigned.
- Quality Gate Manager - SAP_SM_QGM_ALL
- Quality Manager - SAP_SM_QGM_STATUS_QM
- User for Quality Gate Mgmt Transport Activities - SAP_SM_QGM_TRANSPORT
- Quality Advisory Board Member - SAP_SM_QGM_STATUS_QAB
3) Later specify a system user in the project administration as below.
Assign Logical component
You must ensure that the logical components assigned to SAP Solution Manager project and assign all your systems to system roles.
Activate IMG project
Create an IMG project for all logical components using the create button as below. When asked to create a transport request, immediately choose No, Later. Finally, all IMG projects against system role should show a green light.
Phases of the Quality Gate Management projects
Quality Gate Management projects have the following four phases:
- The Scope phase ensures that the tasks are performed in the project which are required for successful completion. You can verify the architecture and the technical prerequisites of the systems for your projects.The scope phase begins at the Q-Gate "Project Start".
- The Build phase is the actual development process. Transport requests are created, and given development objects, in all systems in the project. The transports are imported into the subsequent systems together, to guarantee correct function if the transport requests are functionally interdependent.The scope phase begins at the Q-Gate "Scope to Build".
- In the Test phase, projects, or changes to projects, are imported and activated in the test systems. The previously-defined test cases (e.g. integration and user acceptance test) must be accepted by the test team. If there are errors in the test cases, you must make the corrections which are assigned to the development systems in new transport requests.The test phase begins at the "Build to Test" Q-Gate.
- Only the entire project, with all changes and corrections, can be imported into the Deploy Phase. This ensures that all transport requests of a project are imported, completely and in the correct sequence, into the production systems. Project go live is the formal end, with the last Q-Gate.The Deploy phase begins at the Q-Gate "Test to Deploy".
Section II
Project Management with Quality Gate Management
You can manage the Q-Gate data of your projects in the SAP Solution Manager Change Management work center.you can reach the workcenter by using the tcode "solman_workcenter".
In Change Management Workcenter, choose Projects onthe left and Choose your Solution Manager project for maintaining.
There are four steps involved in maintain project.
STEP I Define Q gates and Milestones
In this step Define quality manager and quality advisory board member and Define milestones, planned start and additional Q-Gates.You can upload template documents for Q-Gates. Select the row of the Q-Gate and choose Upload Template .
STEP II Check Transport Landscape
The TMS Check column indicates whether a logical component for the TMS has been configured correctly.(Green = correct, red = incorrect.). And you can select the logical components that you wish to use in the quality gate manage ment, in the Include in Project column.
STEP III Assign Q gates to System Roles
You specify which Q-Gate is to be passed for which system. The project phases are shown, depending on the assignment to the Q-Gates, in the Phase column. But you can only assign each Q-Gate once.
STEP IV Confirm Data
Once all defined please confirm and save.
Now your project can be used in quality gate management.
Quality Gate Management Tabs
There are four tabs to edit the quality gate (Q-Gate) data, in the SAP Solution Manager Change Management work center:
Graphical view: This view contains an overview of the deadlines, Q-Gates, and milestones in your project. You can prepare existing projects for quality gate management, or change them, and manage document templates for the project Q-Gates, with Maintain Project.
List view:This view displays and edits your projects in a list. You can also perform other functions, such as releasing transport requests, checking TMS configuration, go to the Q-Gate data, or start an import into the following systems, in this view.
project status view: This view gives you a graphical overview of your system landscape, with the systems assigned to phases, which are connected by Q-Gates.
The color of the Q-Gates indicates their status:
- Grey: Q-Gate initial, not yet processed
- Orange: Q-Gate in process
- Green: Q-Gate passed
Risks: This view gives you an overview of the risks which have arisen in your transport landscape during transports.The risks are collected automatically by the system. The quality manager can decide before each phase or phase completion whether all transports have run correctly into the next system or whether he or she must take measures to ensure that they do so.
Section III
Change control with Qgate - Create change request
Change request has been created using "create change" button under the list view.
Create a Transport Request for a Project
To create a transport request for the project, put the cursor on a change and choose Create Transport Request.You go to the new transport request creation window. Choose between the transport request types Customizing and Workbench. You can also enter system and client information, and assign developers. These two fields contain your user ID by default.When you have entered your data, choose Create.The system creates the transport request.
you can only create a transport request in the quality gate management for a change, not independently.
Release Transport Requests
Put the cursor on a project, a change, or a transport request, and choose Release Transport Requests. or from the project view.
You go to a window with the transport requests to be transported.You can select all, deselect all, or select one transport request.To release the transport requests, choose Release.
Import Changes
Once the corresponding Q-Gate passed, you can able to import changes into a subsequent system.
Put the cursor on the project, and choose Import. You go to a window in which you can enter the import parameters for the project. Enter the ID of the target system and the clients (i.e. the logical system into which to import). Enter the required parameter and continue.The import runs immediately or later, depending on your entry.
Deploy changes
The deploy phase begins at the Q-Gate "Test to Deploy". Once all the required changes done and verified, the entire project, with all changes and corrections, can be imported into the Deploy Phase. This helped to ensures that all transport requests of a project are imported, completely and in the correct sequence, into the production systems. Project go live is the formal end, with the last Q-Gate.
Quality Gate Process
A quality gate is a point in the life cycle of changes happening across a system landscape where changes wait for the approval of the change manager and change advisory board to move ahead. A quality gate is used for controlling changes before they are released to the next level and also to ensure deadlines are met.
You can edit data for the Q-Gate in the graphical, list, or project status view.Below are the posiblities.
- In the graphical view, select a Q-Gate to open it.
- In the list view, put the cursor on a project and choose Open Q-Gate.(But only currently active Q-Gate.)
- In the project status view, putting the cursor on a Q-Gate activates the Q-Gate pushbutton.
All views show information about the Q-Gate. Some fields are ready for input. You can upload, download or delete documents in the system, or enter issues, at the bottom of the screen.
I will explain it from the project status view, Put the cursor on the project or Q-Gate and choose Open Q-Gate. You go to a window with the project data and the Q-Gate data as header. Which fields are ready for input depends on the user. Quality managers and members of the quality advisory board, for example, can release a Q-Gate in one of the following ways:
- Initial – no status is set.
- Partially passed – some minor points are still open in this phase, but they should not delay the project.
- Passed – the project can go to the next phase.
- Not passed — the project cannot go to the next phase.
Approval from Quality Advisory Board(QAB)
Once the QGate passed from quality manager it will be lied in the queue of Quality Advisory Board.
Now the changes again verified by the QAB. They ensure the quality, and pass the Qgate.
Uses of the Quality Gate Management
Following are the uses of change control with Qgates.
- We get 100%transparency of changes
- Used as central transport mechanism and change control system to manage changes across technology stacks and application components
- Provides central test plan for core business processes
- A central quality manager validating test execution and test completeness
- Integration of every development workbench into the central transport and change control system.
Other Interesting Blogs about difference between Charm and Quality Gate as below Q: ChaRM vs QGate * Comparison and Relationship of ChaRM and Quality Gate
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