Unified Configuration Management

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 Configuration Management Overview  

The fundamental purpose of Configuration Management is to establish and maintain the integrity and control of software and hardware products (e.g. servers, source code, patches, documents, CPU’s etc) throughout a project’s life cycle.

Effective configuration management can be defined as stabilising the products (artefacts) and process (activities) at key points in the life cycle. 

The key integrated aspects of CM are:

v      Identification: Required to ensure you have identified (understood) the current state of your products and systems. This can be done in various ways including use of formal configuration documentation, use of version control tools, use of baselining (snapshot) tools etc.

v      Management: To ensure project (product) evolves appropriately, various Management mechanisms i.e. procedures and quality gates should be employed within the organisations life cycles. This area is usually supported with workflow, deployment and version control tools. Areas of attention include:

·         Development Practices

·         Engineering Practices

·         Defect Tracking

·         Change Requests

·         Deployment Management

·         System Management

v      Status Accounting: Needed to ensure we have necessary information to enhance our decision-making capability. Through status accounting we are able to produce reports based on previously captured data (assuming we have established mature identification and management procedures). The information provided should support all levels of the organisation e.g. engineers, developers, project managers, business managers etc.

v      Audit: Review and audit is required to ensure that the organisation’s CM process is adhered to and that our configurations are accurate. Primary forms of audit include:

·    Physical Audit i.e. where we ensure the identified configuration is the same as the actual configuration.

·    Functional Audit i.e. where we ensure the functional description e.g. use-case, maps to the actual functions (primarily done via testing).

·    Process Audit i.e. where we ensure the defined process (as documented in the CMP) is consistently followed. 

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