MKS Implementer 2006 Administration Guide

Workflow
Implementer and MKS Integrity Integration
Every type follows a workflow, which is defined for every issue of that type. Workflow is the
process established by an administrator to capture and track information and steps during
your software development cycle. Each issue type has its own set of states to advance through
the development cycles. For example, a change request might go through the states: new,
approved, coding, testing, and deployed. States can also be shared across several workflows.
Issues and their current states provide change management information necessary to support
business decisions.
MKS Integrity helps you manage issues by assigning them to responsible groups and by
tracking and enforcing rules of your workflow. The ability to monitor the progress of issues
at any time means they can be handled in a timely manner. By running reports on the issue
data, you are able to identify problem areas that require attention and evaluate the
effectiveness of improvements over time.
As part of the integration with Implementer, you can track changes to members through an
issue’s change package. An Implementer change package reflects the iSeries development done
to resolve the issue. For example, a solution’s change package contains all members that were
changed to fix a problem.
The following rules apply when using issues and Implementer change packages:
Each change package reflects the members effected for a single production environment.
Multiple change packages are created for a single issue when multiple production
environments are affected. For example, this is the case when making a software fix to an
older version as well as to the new release. If an issue needs to be fixed in more than one
application, a new change package is created for each application, keeping each fix
separate.
Development progress in Implementer optionally updates the state of an issue to reflect
the development progress within Implementer. For example, when a member is checked
out for an issue, the issue state could be automatically set to “Coding”. When all changes
for an issue are promoted to quality assurance, the state could be automatically set to
“Testing”.
Implementer development activities are controlled by an issue’s workflow.
An issues change packages close automatically by promoting the members forward to a
production environment.
The seamless integration between Implementer and MKS Integrity ensures that all iSeries
development activity not only conforms to standard version control mechanisms within
Implementer, but it extends these controls by ensuring that the corporate workflow for
process management setup within MKS Integrity is never violated by a single development
action. Then as a result of iSeries development, the enterprise wide issue tracking system is
updated automatically to communicate the issue state change throughout the organization.
Throughout the development process, each member being worked on is individually tracked
on the MKS Integrity issue.
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