Impact analysis workflow

The Lifecycle Query Engine index makes thousands of artifacts available to users, but not all of the artifacts are important to users. Run analysis on any artifact retrievable by the index to determine how potential changes to artifacts can affect related artifacts and products.

Artifacts by themselves are somewhat useful, but artifacts with relationships to other artifacts are rich data. For example, at the start of a product release, you create a Rational Team Concert™ work item. As the project moves forward, other work items are created and are linked to the original work item. The original work item and all the work items with relationships to it can be retrieved by the index. Relationships between work items are preserved by the index. If you add one work item to a product hierarchy, you also have access to all the rich data that comes with that work item. Use the impact analysis features to take advantage of this rich, linked data.

But even linked data is not useful if it is dumped into an index pool. Analysis enables users to access the linked data in a smart way. Users can create impact analysis profiles and filters to restrict the data results so that users see only the most relevant artifacts for their uses. Users can create custom impact analysis diagrams to show artifacts that link to or from the focus artifact and to explore how changes impact related artifacts.

Users can find answers to questions, such as What is the requirement behind the artifact? An artifact has child links, so even though you run an impact analysis on a product, if the product contains links to requirements, you receive that data. If your team must replace the V8 engine in SuperCar with a V12, your team might want to look at the braking system to find out the requirement for a car with a more powerful engine (the artifact).

Analysis enables teams to follow child work items back to the parent work item, follow test cases back to a requirement, follow products back to design models. The information becomes richer when gathered and viewed in a useful context. Additionally, by giving the information context, analysis also pares down the artifacts gathered. However, if the analysis still gathers too much or too little data, you can change the depth of the analysis, add artifacts, remove artifacts, and apply filters until you obtain the right information set.

The following workflow is typical when working with impact analysis:

  1. Find the focus artifact that you want to analyze.

    If the focus artifact must be fixed or replaced, you might want to analyze what other artifacts must change if the focus artifact is fixed or replaced. Use the results to view the impact of the change on other products so that you make smart decisions on scheduling and cost-to-market impact.

    For steps, see Finding a product, configuration, or baseline or Querying for artifacts using predefined queries

  2. Set the configuration to give context to the focus artifact.

    If there are multiple versions or product branches of the focus artifact, then specifying the configuration gives you the correct context in which the focus artifact is used. Setting the correct configuration hones the artifacts that the diagram displays.

  3. Run the impact analysis.

    Use the Default impact analysis profile, in which the analysis flows away (downstream) from the focus artifact. Your team might have impact analysis profiles and diagrams created by a team lead, a team member who understands the data, or an IBM® services representative. If so, choose the profile and diagram for the results you want.

    For steps, see Analyzing an artifact's relationships to other artifacts.

  4. Discover relationships and dependencies between the focus artifact and the gathered artifacts.

    Team members can read information in the native tool by right-clicking on an artifact and choosing Preview. To find where an artifact is used in other products, choose Find Use in Products. Team members can also set quick filtering by choosing Hide Artifact, Hide Type, and Expand.


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