17.2 Configuration Management

Configuration management in itself produces items that may be placed under configuration management, Except for a high degree of formalism, with highly critical systems, it's rare for this to include anything but the configuration management plan and some status reports (tracing reports and delivery descriptions).

Change control is rarely needed for forms and the like produced under configuration management. Some forms, such as release requests, do not change at all. Others such as change requests , change in a controlled way according to a (defined) life cycle.

A person responsible for configuration management may prepare the configuration management plan, but it may also be the project manager. Quality assurance interfaces with configuration management in connection with the approval of objects and the reporting and handling of observations. Quality assurance produces item approvals and event registrations, both of which are input for configuration management.

Milestone Deliveries

Status reports, such as tracing reports and delivery descriptions, form part of milestone deliveries. They may change to some extent at the time leading up to the milestone (and maybe just after) if the relevant configuration items change. A milestone at the conclusion of the software requirement analysis may, for example, contain a report on tracing between the user requirement specification and the software requirement specification, together with a delivery description indicating which configuration items form part of the delivery, and in which versions.

If, say, the user requirement specification must be changed and is issued in a new version in connection with final approval of the milestone, both the tracing report and delivery description must be changed accordingly . This means that change requests must be prepared for these items if they are kept under configuration management.

Storage

In some companies, the configuration items from configuration management itself (and maybe from quality assurance) are stored separately from the rest of the configuration items for the project, partly because they are often on paper.

Change Control

Changes of configuration items discussed here will most often be derived changes, as described earlier. Of course, plain errors may occur in a report under configuration management. In such cases, one must be able to undertake change control.

Status Reporting

Items produced under configuration management are unlikely to need separate status reporting. However, these items form part of delivery descriptions. Figure 17-1 shows the delivery report for the user requirement specification scenario described above under Milestone Deliveries. The release note in this example is recursiveit includes itself as part of the delivery.

Figure 17-1. Release Note for Full Delivery (Excerpt)