Configuration Management Process
Author: Jim John
July 2007
In his presentation to the Dayton SPIN organization, Mr. Alan S. Koch overviewed Configuration Management and some of its associated processes. Alan is the president of ASK Process, Inc.
Mr. Koch stressed that good people with good processes and good tools create a good CM environment. That the success of a project rests on a three legged stool of people, processes and tools, if any one of the legs is broken, the stool falls over. Tools are the least important when it comes to contributing to the success of a project, but tools are a natural starting point in creating a common understanding of the CM environment. A common understanding insures that CM terms such as ‘baseline’ and ‘change control’ mean the same thing to everyone in the organization. He advised that when necessary an organization should provide focused CM training to different groups and very importantly, when you write process documentation, write it for experts. Keep training out of the processes documentation and in the training manual. Alan said his favorite tool is the checklist. A checklist strikes a balance between documenting significant detail to achieve an outcome and being minimal enough to insure that a process is used. A checklist written for experts is a reminder of what to do - not how to do it. It should be no more than one page long.
The largest contributor to productivity are the people involved, the next largest is the support that people get from the process and its documentation. Good processes help good people be productive. Finally, tools are last in contribution to success. To drive this point home Mr. Koch quips “A fool with a tool is still a fool.”
Summing up his presentation into a few bits, Mr. Koch strongly feels that Configuration Management (like most other disciplines) requires appropriate attention to many things at once.
- Having the right people and training them well,
- Establishing good processes and following them consistently, and
- Identifying tools that will make those people and processes efficient.
Mr. Koch’s presentation was sponsored in part by the Borland Corporation.
Graphics from the presentation as well as the Dayton SPIN calendar of events are available at www.daytonspin.org.
