14.1 Customer

This section describes the customer's configuration management role in connection with the contractor's development and maintenance of a product. It also describes the interfaces between the customer's and contractor's configuration management. This is not directly about the customer's own configuration management. If the difference between the customer's and the contractor's levels of configuration management is large, it will require an extra effort from both parties to make the cooperation work.

The customer is responsible for making sure the contractor has a level of configuration management that satisfies the customer's requirements and for making these requirements clear to the contractor. The customer is also responsible for living up to the obligations for configuration management specified in the contract. Especially with regard to large projects, it may also be the customer's responsibility to have his own configuration control board, which possibly communicates with the contractor by means of a common configuration control board.

A customer must have knowledge of configuration management in general at least to the level the contractor is required to fulfill, and preferably further. A customer must be able to study, understand, and use the contractor's configuration management to the extent required for cooperation and establishment of a contract. Depending on what is agreed to, customer activities may include

• Participating in one or more configuration control boards

• Creating event registrations

• Approving produced configuration items

In some cases, the customer (or a third party contracted by the customer) takes over operation and maintenance of a product. Here, the party who takes over operation must perform all the usual configuration management activities connected with product maintenance. In such cases the requirements for configuration management in the activity must be made clear beforehand, just like the interfaces in connection with delivery.

References

More details about relevant subjects may be found in Chapters 13Person Responsible for Customer Contact and 20Multiple Stakeholders.