10.2 Managing Configurations is Everyone s Job

10.2 Managing Configurations is Everyone's Job

Configuration management is an inevitable part of everyday life for anyone who deals with developing and maintaining software products. No matter which role you have it will involve configuration management activities. These activities may take up a lot of room or a little room in your life, but everybody will benefit from the results and will have to contribute to the performance. This is described in Chapters 1214. The extent of its influence depends, among other things, on its scope and degree of formalism. If no configuration management is performed in a certain context, you risk, for instance, having to redo something that has already been completed.

As indicated earlier, configuration management is an administrative discipline that makes special demands on people. This means that everyone on a project must know which configuration management processes exist for the activities he or she is responsible for performing and what the process descriptions contain.