Working with purposes

A purpose defines the project state and ensures that it selects the right members when you update. Each project has a purpose. Use purposes to set up multiple prep, shared, working, or visible versions of the same project for different uses, such as different levels of testing.

Purposes are only a part of build management. The release and purpose combination for a project determines which process rule the project uses.

Each release contains a list of process rules that are valid for that release. Use process rules to control the process for a team for a particular release, and to let teams working on different releases use different processes.

Here is the Release Properties dialog box that displays the process rules for release MYSC/1.0 - cc. In this example, one of the purposes is Visible Development and one of the process rules is MYSC/1.0: Visible Development.

Release Properties dialog that displays process rules for release MYSC/1.0 - cc

A process rule specifies how a project is updated. To use a process rule, a project must have a release and purpose set. There is one active process rule for each purpose for a release.

This figure shows a project grouping in the Properties dialog box titled All Inst/1.0 Integration Testing Projects from Database D - ccm.

The release for the project grouping is set to Ints/1.0. The project grouping purpose is set to Integration Testing. This process rule defines how the baseline and tasks are selected.

Figure showing a project grouping in the Properties dialog titled All Inst/1.0 Integration Testing Projects from Database D


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