Change Management Rules

You can enable change management (CM) rules in the process model in order to gain tighter control over planning, implementing, and closing changes. One set of rules, defined for a Dimensions CM request type, organizes a request's lifecycle states into phases. These phases determine the relationships that can be established in each state, as well as which other tasks can be performed. The rules also determine how parent-child requests affect each other.

The other set of rules, defined for an item type, connects a Dimensions CM request lifecycle and an item lifecycle. These rules require item revisions to be related to requests at various states in its lifecycle. In this way, CM rules bring version management and change management closer together, ensuring that related items and requests progress through their lifecycles in tandem.

You enable rules for specific item types and request types in a product. This means that the same lifecycle can be reused within the same product or across products with different rules applied per object type.

There is a per-project override you can apply that can cause item operations taking place within that project to act in one of the following ways:

- To take effect according to whether the CM rules are enabled on the individual item and request types or not

- To behave as if CM rules were enabled for all item and request types

- To behave as if CM rules were disabled for all item and request types.

These overrides do not apply to streams.

Most rules are related to states on the normal path through the relevant lifecycle.

Note that rules can be applied only to object types that are allowed to be in valid relationships. For items, you can specify relationships between two item types. For Dimensions CM requests, you can specify relationships between two requests types or a request type and an item type.

Related Topics

Rules for Request Lifecycles

Rules for Item Lifecycles

Examples of Rule Usage