7.3 Metadata for Authorization

Authorization expresses who can do what and who has done what to a configuration item. Authorization may consist of the data elements shown in Figure 7-3.

Figure 7-3. Metadata for Authorization

graphics/07fig03.gif

Typically, a software project will have three types of authorization, expressed by the relations "produced by," "under the responsibility of," and "approval by." In some cases, there may be more. The names of the people authorized must be registered, and signatures and dates may be registered as a formal documentation that the tasks in question have been solved .

It's up to each organization to define conventions for authorization. Often a contract may, to some extent at least, express how authorization is defined. A contract may demand that the customer have a representative in the group responsible for approval of requirement specification documents as well as for the whole system.

Producer

The producer or producers are responsible for producing the item and placing it under configuration management. The producer may also be the person(s) producing new versions on the basis of change requests . For source code, the producer will typically be the programmer. For documents, it will typically be the author or authorsdesigners in the case of a design document or the project manager in the case of a project plan.

The Person Holding Overall Responsibility

The person holding overall responsibility has final responsibility for the correct production and delivery of the configuration item in the project in which the item is produced. It may be the project manager or the product manager, or it may be a group leader under a project manager or the person responsible for test.

The Person Responsible for Approval

The person responsible for approval may be the producer in the informal or early activities of configuration management; it may be the person responsible for quality in configuration management with a higher level of formalism; or it may be a group of stakeholders when configuration management is carried out with a high level of formalism. The person responsible for approval may be identical to a configuration control board, which is responsible for the approval of any changes to a configuration item and in some cases also for determining that an item is ready for configuration management.

Ownership

In some contexts, the concept of ownership of a configuration management item is employed. This is often an expression of who may extract an item for productionthat is, who can make changes to it. Ownership may be given to the producer or the person responsible, but under all circumstances it should be the configuration control board that decides who can make changes to an item (produce a new version) when it has been placed under configuration management.



Configuration Management Principles and Practice
Configuration Management Principles and Practice
ISBN: 0321117662
EAN: 2147483647
Year: 2002
Pages: 181

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