Engineering Change Lifecycle

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, the Author, Owner, Product Manager, or Requirement Manager is notified as to who owns the product of the newly created engineering change.

The EC owner can perform these tasks:

• Add assignees.
• Add impact analyses.
• Add proposed changes.
• 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 these tasks:

• Add impact analyses.
• Add proposed changes.
• Modify attributes except Change Owner.

Evaluate

In the Evaluate state, an Author, Owner, Product Manager, or Requirement Manager evaluates the engineering change. When you promote from the Evaluate state:

• The engineering change has been assigned to a person
• An impact analysis has been performed
• Assignees are notified of their assignment.

When you promote from Evaluate to Review, a route is created using the selected route template; without a template, a default route is created without tasks and you must add tasks/assignees to the route for the review.

Review

The tasks are performed based on the route you create. The review can include notifications, approvals, or requests for comments. After the route is complete, the engineering change moves to Approved.

Approved

Upon entering this state, the change owner is notified that the change has been approved. The change owner and the assigned team begin to plan the implementation tasks. The change 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. The assignee and change owner can add other implemented items.

Validate

Depending on the Force Validation attribute, test cases (at least one) need to be related to the engineering change. 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 value is No.

The person assigned to the change is now responsible for validating the fixes and promoting the change to Formal Approval. The assignee can demote an engineering change 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.

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

Complete

Upon completion of the change, all notifications are made, the float on release activities take place, and the engineering change is complete. The engineering change cannot be removed once it reaches the Complete lifecycle state.

Close

The change owner or anyone from the approval list can promote the engineering change to the Close state from any state except Complete and Reject. Change owners and distribution list members will be notified. While promoting an engineering change to this state, the user must enter a "close reason" comment. This forced entry of a comment is a configurable option. The engineering change cannot be removed once it is closed.

Reject

The change owner or anyone from the approval list can reject the engineering change from any state except Complete and Close. On rejecting an change, a notification is sent to the distribution list and the change owner. While promoting an engineering change to this state, the user must enter a "rejection reason". This forced entry of a comment is a configurable option. The engineering change cannot be removed once it has been rejected.