13.2 Designer

Designers produce architectural and detailed designs and maintain these documents throughout the lifetime of the product, producing new versions according to change requests . All configuration management activities must be performed for the design activities for which this person is responsible.

Designers must keep configuration management in mind when design work is done. This may be in the form of designing with a view to making changes as easy as possible to implement and making design items easy to place under configuration management, both individually and as deliveries. Designers contribute to the performance of configuration management by

• Identifying relevant configuration items (design documents)

• Placing relevant configuration items in storage after due approval

• Producing appropriate event registrations for items used in connection with design work, such as user requirement specifications and software requirements specifications

Designers may also be involved with configuration control boards in evaluating event registrations in later development activities.

Benefits

On top of the benefits of placing their own products under configuration management, designers may benefit from configuration management by

• Extracting related configuration items as the basis for producing design items, such as software requirements specifications

• Getting information on the status and history of these items

• Getting trace analysis results toward these items, to ensure that the design covers all demands

References

More details about relevant subjects may be found in Chapter 16Documentation Activities (Specifications and Design).