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This blog describes the newest feature that is available in Project and Task Management application that allows you to effectively manage quality gates in your projects within Cloud ALM.
Why is it required to have quality gates in a project?
Quality gates in project management are critical checkpoints or milestones that help ensure the project's deliverables meet predefined quality standards before progressing to the next phase. Here are some of the key reasons why it is necessary to plan and execute quality gate checks within the project:
- Early issue detection: Quality gates allow early detection of issues in project deliverables. By conducting thorough reviews and assessments at specific points in the project lifecycle, the project team can identify and address problems before they escalate.
- Risk mitigation: Quality gates serve as a mechanism for risk mitigation. They provide an opportunity to assess potential risks related to project scope, quality, resource constraints, and other factors. Early identification of risks allows the project team to develop effective mitigation strategies and contingency plans.
- Informed Decision-Making: Quality gates offer decision-makers the information needed to make informed decisions about the project's direction. Based on the outcomes of quality assessments, project managers and stakeholders can decide whether to proceed, adjust, or address issues before advancing to the next phase.
- Project governance: Quality gates support effective project governance by providing a structured approach to project reviews. This structured governance helps in standardizing processes, improving accountability, and ensuring that the project teams adhere to established project management methodologies.
How to plan and execute quality gate checks in projects within Cloud ALM?
As a best practice, it is recommended to have at least one quality gate per phase which is conducted at the end of each phase to ensure a smooth change to the next phase. However, based on your project needs you could have more than one quality gate within the defined Timeboxes in your project.
In our example we will see how we can prepare for and execute the quality gate check at the end of the Explore phase to ensure all the relevant project deliverables are in place to start with the ‘Realize’ phase.
Prepare for Quality Gate Check:
Step 1: Within the Tasks application, select the Type ‘Quality gate’ in the filter and then use the ‘Create’ option to create a ‘Quality Gate’.
Step 2: You can define clear and measurable quality criteria for the specific phase that is being evaluated. The ‘Checklist’ within the Quality Gate allows you to create checklist items to inspect all the relevant documentation and artifacts such as project plans, requirements specifications, design documents, and test plans etc. associated with the phase, and check whether they are complete before moving to the next phase. There are 2 ways to create the checklist within a Quality Gate.
Option 1: You can create the checklist manually by using the ‘Create’ option.
Option 2: You can create the checklist using the excel upload/download option.
The checklist item consists of following attributes:
- Title: To capture what is being checked
- Status: To capture the outcome of the check
- Planned Completion: To capture the planned completion date of the item being checked
- User Type: To capture the user type the responsible person belongs to (SAP, Partner, Employee)
- Description: To capture additional information related to the checklist item
- Comments: To capture comments related to the checklist item by the team members
Step 3(Optional): Since a quality gate is a critical milestone within the project, you can easily link the Quality Gate to a milestone associated with each phase. This can be established by maintaining the Timebox and linking the ‘Start date’ of the task.
In our example, a custom milestone ‘Q-gate check for Explore’ has been created and the Quality Gate is linked to this milestone.
The quality gates milestone can be visualized in the Gantt view which supports effective planning and co-ordination amongst the project team and timely preparation for the quality gate reviews.
Execute Quality Gate Check:
Step 4: The review team consisting of the relevant stakeholders, subject matter experts and project members participate in the quality gate check to examine the completeness, accuracy, and compliance of the deliverables with established project standards.
For each checklist item, you can assign an appropriate status based on the outcome of the check:
Step 5: Based on the assessment in step 4, there may be deviations or risks associated with the phase that are identified.
You can manage any follow-up activity associated with the quality gate using the option ‘Create Follow-up Task’. This allows you to create a project task which can be used to track the progress of the follow-up activities related to the quality gate.
The follow-up task is created with the child relation and the quality gate is automatically assigned to this task.
Step 6: Once the assessment is complete, based on the outcome of the review you can set the final status of the Quality Gate.
Track Quality Gates:
Quality gates associated with the current phase of the project is available in the project’s General Information. This provides an indication about the upcoming quality gates associated with the ongoing project phase and keeps the project members informed.
The Quality Gates card in the Project Overview shows the status of the quality gates per phase and the completion percentage of the checklist items. You can get a quick overview of how the project has fared in terms of the various quality gates associated with the project phases and also helps in identifying opportunities for improvement in processes and methodologies.
Next Steps:
We encourage you to use this feature and share your insights and experiences with us. Please feel free to leave your feedback in the comments section. You are also welcome to share your requests for blogs on specific topics in project and task management here.
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