Structure, Locking and the Portfolio Manager State Model

When you use Sparx EA you probably have a model structure something like this:
A ‘baseline’ area, where you keep your ‘gold standard’ knowledge. This content describes the world as it is right now. Depending on what kinds of models you are creating, this might have all kinds of content.
We also have an area for ‘staging’ – more about this later…

A logged-in modeler has access to just one project within a larger group, a portfolio or program, of related projects.

So what lifecycle does Portfolio Manager apply to EA model elements?
– Firstly, things in the baseline have a status of ‘Implemented’.
– If we think we might want to change something in the baseline, then we need to create a “branch”. This creates a copy of the baseline element in the project package.
– When we create new things in our project, they get the EA default status of ‘Proposed’.
– Then at some point, when your project moves from the ‘thinking and feasibility’ stage to a ‘building and delivering’ mode, you can promote things to the status of ‘Planned’. Different organizations will call this milestone by different names … but if you have a project delivery process, you’ll certainly have one somewhere.
– Later, when the project delivers the change, things in the model can be made ‘Implemented’. Then they replace the previous baseline elements, or are added as new elements in the baseline
– There is also a lifecycle for things we are trying to delete, or ‘retire’ in Portfolio Manager terms.
– First you can branch something – and show you are thinking about retiring it. Then when you’re sure, make it ‘planned to retire’.
– When this change is implemented, the element remains in the model, but is put in an archive package.

See Also Portfolio Manager repository setup