Custom Promotion

While we recommend stage promotion for stable and predictable releases, custom promotion provides flexibility to move approved work items forward, even if other work items in the same stage require additional work, such as testing.

Example You have work items, W1, W2, W3 in the Integration stage. W1 and W2 are ready, but a related work item, W3 requires more work. With custom promotion, you can promote work items, W1 and W2 to UAT, while W3 remains in Integration. You can promote W3 to UAT later when it’s ready.

Lifecycle Center tracks the commit history for each work item. When you promote individual work items from a stage, Lifecycle Center extracts the changes specific to the selected work items. It then creates a change request that contains only the metadata from the selected work items and applies it to the target stage branch. After the prepromotion validation completes, the selected work items move to the next stage. Remaining work items stay in the source stage and maintain their status. This process makes sure that changes remain accurate while providing the flexibility needed for efficient release management.

Note Always check for dependencies and review the remaining work items in the stage for possible merge issues after promotion. During custom promotion, Lifecycle Center identifies work items in the stage that share metadata components or have dependencies. You can combine work items to prevent potential conflicts.

• Promote Individual Work Items from a Stage
  Move approved work items forward without waiting for the entire stage to be ready. Select specific work items for promotion, while others remain in their current stage until they’re ready.
• Combine Work Items in Lifecycle Center
  Use combine work items to prevent conflicts when promoting individual work items with custom promotion. When work items in a stage share metadata or depend on each other, promoting them individually results in conflicts or blocked promotions.