Configuration Management

It is the task of the configuration management (CM) to apply a regular and organisational rule on the entire life cycle of a software development: From the designing process, to implementation, supervision – up to its disposal.

It is easy to think that configuration management would only be the actual configuration of the software. In reality, however, configuration management includes all kinds of combinations between hardware, software and services – the aim being the ability to recreate a product, service or software at any given time.

History

The Initiator for the configuration management of today can be found in the 1950s. Back then, products and the problems resulting from them became increasingly complex. With the means they had at that point, which were usually ordinary maps, looking after these problems became almost impossible – especially where the areas of aviation and astronautics were concerned. Other areas also produced increasingly complex products in the following years, which caused configuration management to spread to other fields and to specialise.

Definition according to ISO 10007:2003

Just as for many other useful regulations there is also a Definition for configuration management:  “configuration management coordinates activities to direct and control configuration”, where a configuration is to be understood as the sum of “interconnected functional and physical features of a product, as described in the product Management specification”.

Conceptional Sections

Depending on the project or product, different technical and organisational rules are made.

As concepts, we refer to the following sectors:

• Organisation and planning of the configuration managements (CMO)
• Identification configuration (IC)
• Supervision configuration (SC)
• Accountancy configuration (AC)
• Audit configuration (AuC)

Customer’s Benefit

With other words: Using the right kind of configuration management, one can be reassured that it is possible to recreate any result of project work in any version at any time. To do this, the configuration units have to be:

• well labelled,
• administered, and
• archived in a way in which they can be found again.

Starting from the first contract negotiations up to receipt and long period storage of the project – at all times project demand, configuration procedures, processes, methods and tools will be agreed upon with you.