In the past,
a lot of people used to think that configuration
management (CM) was a bit “academic”. But with recent knowledge of what CM
is, it is becoming clearer that CM is business critical. In overall, the whole concept
of configuration management is to see
that business is booming. I know you might be saying what does CM has to do
with business right now. To answer you, I will ask the following questions;
would you buy another mobile phone from your dealer if thy fitted the wrong
replacement parts or if they don’t have the screen to replace your damaged
screen? The answer is obviously no. Change CM is meant address things like this
in every field you can think of.
So the
question is what is configuration management ? Basically, it is an internal service group fitted with tools,
resources, systems and procedures to control multiple versions of the product
of a project. This product is singularly referred to as an asset while a
combined set of assets is called a configuration,
and the configuration of the end product of a project is the sum of its parts.
Now that we understand what CM means, it is important to note that changes to
your project will eventually happen and preparing for such change is change
management (which is by the way an aspect of CM).
Your project
usually ends up with several multiple versions of a product when changes occur, and it is important to have appropriate
knowledge and tracking of these versions. You need to know what was changed and
why it was changed or else your project would be a disappointment. Let’s say
for instance, you are called by a client (that is using an old version of
products as it is compatible with their whole system) who made a custom order
to build more of that version of your product for him and you said okay and
settled the price. You headed to your design shop only to discover that the
drawings have been lost and the designer already retired. This will be a
serious disappointment for you and your customer. To avoid this, it is important to use configurationmanagement for change management.
Configuration management service is provided by a configuration
administrator or librarian. And they will help use CM to better your project in
the following way. CM can be used to keep a complete library of all items that
are produced in your organization (as well as anything that is bought from a
third party). This record is saved in a database of some sort. Every single
record will have detailed information such as who has got what, where it is
kept, why it is kept and any changes made and why they were made. The CM
library will also save master copies of multiple versions of a product. I
believe the need for CM has been made
obvious especially as it relate to change management.
