11.1 Configuration Control Board

The configuration control board carries overall responsibility for change control of configuration items. The board is hence responsible for

• Evaluating event registrations

• Creating relevant change requests

• Following up on event registrations and change requests though their respective life cycles

• Providing feedback to the person who registered the event and other stakeholders

• Coordinating with other related configuration control boards

• Coordinating with project management or other relevant management

A board's role is to represent all stakeholders in the configuration items. It must have a chairman who has the mandate for making decisionsincluding decisions that have economic consequences, so that the decisions of the configuration control board may not be reversed .

The board may delegate responsibility for changesfor example, the project manager may know or be able to identify which configuration items are affected by an event registration. Or the producer of a given configuration item may perform an analysis of the effect of a change on the product. But the overall responsibility lies nonetheless with the board. This also means that the board's decisions cannot be appealed. Therefore, it's important to pay attention to the constitution of the board(s).

A board may consist of a single person, such as the producer of an object or the person responsible for quality assurance, if the person with overall responsibility has granted this person the authority to make appropriate decisions. This typically happens in production, where a document or piece of code is first written and work can be performed relatively informally, without bureaucracy and heaps of paper.

Where the configuration item has a wider impact, a board may consist of a number of people, such as the project manager, customer representative, and the person responsible for quality assurance. This may be where a requirement specification forms the basis for the design or the final delivery to the customer.

Skills and Knowledge

The configuration control board exclusively decides the fate of an event registration. It's therefore important that the board has the competence and will to make the necessary decisions, especially where these decisions may be unpopular.

The board must know the general purpose of the product and possibly related products, along with the company vision to an extent that allows competent assessment of the consequences of changes. The board must of course also have a general knowledge of configuration management as it's performed in the given context, especially regarding procedures for change control. It must know what information is available about configuration items and how to access it.

Configuration control boards are best constituted by people with a variety of team roles, preferably coordinator and monitor/ evaluator . At least one member must have a good measure of diplomacy and courage.

Multiple Boards

A company may have more than one board, handling different types of configuration items and/or connected to different organizational units. This is illustrated in Figure 11-1. The figure also shows how configuration items may have an impact on different organizational units, such as the producer, project, entire company, or customer. Depending on where the impact of the item is, different boards may be responsible for change control. (Figure 11-1 shows only an organizational aspect, not a time aspect.)

Figure 11-1. Multiple Configuration Control Boards

Multiple boards are unusual, but they should not be found only in the formal end of the spectrum. It would be advantageous for relatively informal configuration management to graduate the formality of the change control process by the use of different types of boards. Many companies think they should have only one board and that it must be large and formal. Therefore they give up on the idea of having a board at all. This is a shame, because they could easily benefit if they had multiple boards with a variety of constitutions. It's the responsibility of the company to decide on the constitution of the boards for various configuration items. You do, however, have to be careful not to end up with a swarm of boards.

Each board, where more than one exists, must have a clearly defined area of responsibility, limited to the relevant configuration items. Possible interfaces must be clarified, such as if an event registration has to be handed over to a different board or an item must be handled by two boards.

Managing Configurations of CCB Work Products

Configuration management activities may also be performed for products produced by the configuration control board, but this doesn't often happen.

References

It may be of special interest to members of configuration control boards to read Chapters 1Change Control, 7, 8, 9, and 17Configuration Management.