Focused Build SP2 – Use of Maintenance Project – Scenario R2D Extended (1)

Three Possible Scenarios How To Perform This Important Task.

Once when your Focused build project is ready for Go-Live you have to hypercare/maintain what have you delivered in your last release.

There re 3 scenarios how to perform this very important task:

R2D Simple (4 Systems Landscape) : .once your current release is in hypercare you next release will take over unfinished change documents and support old release utilizing preliminary import (does not follow release phases) approach inside new release. Continuous innovation plus bug fixing with preliminary import.
R2D Extended (4 Systems Landscape) : After successful Go-Live you can move your corresponding cycle (S1MR) to the Hypercare , therefore your current release cycle will become visible to the newly created FB Maintenance project and you will keep you current cycle in hypercare until you finishes support of your current Go-Live release. The next release will take over unfinished change documents but fixes will stay in the separate Maintenance project related and sticked with old cycle.
SM Full Scope (6 Systems Landscape): use CHARM for the maintenance of your current landscape/release . This approach is valid in case a customer already have CHARM implemented and customer decided to with the new implementation utilizing Focused Build tools.

This blog will explain Scenario 2 (R2D Extended (4 Systems Landscape) which means 4 systems landscape and only use of Development branch. Maintenance branch is not configured.

Branch Concept Overview

The above picture represented in the Solution Manager should look like is presented in the below branch concept. As is presented in the below picture we are dealing just with 4 systems and utilizing just development branch.

The PPM and Release Planning Interaction

How this Maintenance scenario #2 will work once you include PPM projects and Releases the best explanation is in the below screenshot.

Lets start with the preparation of your Solution Manager FB part.

Prerequisites steps.

The proof of concept environment is Solution Manager 7.2 SP7 ST-OST SP2. Question : Is this possible in the ST-OST SP1 ? you have to check OSS notes -Out of the box ST-OST SP1 will not underpin this possibility.
We assume you went trough the Focused Build Configuration guide (link) and followed instructions to adjusted yours FB completely .

Practical Part : Additional Configuration of the FB to use Maintenance Project

The Preparation of Solution Administration

Branch concept should be organized in the way that your all system except productions should be part of the Development branch (DEV,QAS and PPRD) and your PRD systems is going to be part if Productive branch.

In the below screen shoot we will see our Logical Component Group (LCG) we are going to work with. Important because later we will need this information.

Release cycle SPRO preparation (Release Preparation)

In the SPRO select the /SALM/RM_EXT_IMG in order to map your recently created LCG Release Profile Mapping.

Our development branch and its corresponding LCG should be in correlation with the Rel. Profile /SAL/STANDARD. This will promote your LCG to be visible for the cycle creation .

Another very important SPRO activity is to execute /SALM/RM_CYCLE_IMG.

This SPRO action will specify your target Transaction type for release cycle creation in the release planing tool. S1MR is used in the Relese Management of Focused Build.

In case you skip this SPRO action your cycle will not be visible in for the newly created Maintenance project, because not specifying release transaction type for your LCG by default it will use SMRE not S1MR, which is wrong!

You always have to utilize this SPRO action in order to have proper configuration of your FB Release Planing Tool.

with the F4 you can get list of the LCG available for your system
select your LCG where you want to include in your FB Release Management tool

3. This will be you LCG ID

4. Select release cycle transaction type S1MR.

Now you are ready to start with with the preparation of your PPM and Release Cycle.

Release management preparation

In the release management you should create 2 different release for our development branch. Once you create your first release ( e.g Major Release 1.0 ) please move it to the hypercare phase!