Talk:Configuration management
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[edit] Product list
These seem to be all version control systems. Are there any exceptions? If they are all version control tools, we should say so; if not we should separate them out. Actually it should all be moved to List of revision control software and integrated there. m.e. 2 July 2005 09:07 (UTC)
No ! Comfiguration management requires version control int he same way that an Air traffic management system manages aircraft in flight.
Paras 4 and 5 should go thought as these are specific applications of CM.
The theory behind version control is not that dissimilar to configuration management - however, unlike version control, in configuration management the configuration can be constantly changing where as a version is... a version - an example of this might be DNS servers - whose configuration may change repeatedly however the version of the DNS server in use remains the same. Configuration is a collection of child items whose parent is often a version of something. It's an incestuous relationship but they're not the same thing, in my opinion. Where configuration management seems to be adding real value is in version discovery and management of those objects but not their ancestors, which is better served by version control. Another musing is based on dependencies and understanding them as part of a configuration - this is not addressed by version control.
[edit] A broken link
the link to CMBoK seems to point to an empty page. I found the actual contents at http://www.cmcrossroads.com/cgi-bin/cmwiki/view/CM/CMBoK 195.41.27.126 09:39, 24 June 2006 (UTC) JornH
[edit] Limited to Software
This entry (as stated at the start) is limited to IT Configuration Management.
This is not a criticism of the entry, but I would have liked to see more. Shouldn't someone (who knows much more than me, hopefully) add information about general product CM? This is a really big deal in all manufacturing organisations now, and there is a deal of information on it.
ISO does a great deal of CM standardization. I've added the ISO 10007 under the standards list. Given time, I would like to expand on this topic as well. There also is a large selection of documentations and guidelines from DoD, which may help serve as references for general military systems design. I will link those as soon as I can. --Dchem 18:48, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] CM as an enterprise wide initiative
I liked the material posted herein, but I too would like to see information on CM as it pertains to general business. While we have SCM and facilities/engineering CM programs in place, how about CM on an enterprise wide scale that looks at things like staffing, business systems, and delivery of non-computer soft goods and services? Does that experience set exist?
What you are talking about with respect to Business practices is a subset of Quality Systems or quality assurance. Society of Automotive Engineers has AS9000 which serves as a baseline for Business Management System which focuses on Quality Systems for aerospace application, and hense configuration management.--Dchem 18:51, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Sites for Configuration Management section
I don't see why this is needed in the entry. If we already have an "external links" section at the end, isn't the "sites" section just roughly a short directory list of websites that have to do with CM... which is kinda sorta not really wanted for Wikipedia entries? I'm going to delete the section. Please, if you feel as though the section is a valuable asset to the entry, leave a comment - let's have an open discussion here.--Christian B 16:01, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
- Actually, I'm not going to delete it - this whole entry, at least to me, seems to be in need of a rewrite. Right now it's so heavily slanted towards just listing companies / sites that have to do with CM - that isn't needed in a Wikipedia entry. Any thoughts?--Christian B 16:03, 12 July 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Merge from "Hardware configuration management"
I've proposed that Hardware configuration management be merged into this article. I don't think we need to have separate pages for hardware and software until the main article on the general discipline of configuration management gets too big. (As it is, most of the information on the other page is duplicative anyway.) ComputerGeezer (talk) 19:33, 3 April 2008 (UTC)
[edit] Text in Systems engineering article trimmed
I trimmed the introduction of Configuration management in the Systems engineering article and removed the following text:
- CM is divided into five major functional areas (although older documents and standards such as MIL-STD-973 only formally speak of four): Configuration Identification (including selection of Configuration Items (CIs), their nomenclatures, and the identification of baselines), Configuration Control (including change management of the baselines and CIs, the approvals needed for change and distribution of changes to affected parties), Configuration Status Accounting (providing situational awareness of the status of controlled baselines and changes and their traceability to items that are in production or fielded), Configuration Audit (formal review of the objective functional and physical proof from testing and documentation) and the area found in more recent standards such as ANSI/EIA-649, Configuration Planning (implementation planning for the conduct of CM). In other industries such as the commercial High Tech industry or Information Technology industry CM is a growing discipline (much like Systems Engineering), although still strongly associated with Change Management rather than as the broad core business process described above.
Maybe some of this should be integrated in this article -- Marcel Douwe Dekker (talk) 11:04, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
