Configuration Management

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Discussion

Configuration Management establishes and maintains the identity, integrity, status, and controlled change of configuration items throughout their lifecycle.

The discipline identifies configuration items, records approved configurations, controls changes, maintains configuration status information, and verifies conformance between an approved configuration and its realized state.

Configuration Management applies to software, machine images, infrastructure definitions, dependencies, documents, requirements, policies, compliance content, deployment descriptions, operating procedures, and supporting evidence.

Within a Software Factory, Configuration Management connects approved baselines, versioned inputs, build records, deployed environments, change decisions, and Provenance.

Definition

discipline for establishing and maintaining the identity, integrity, status, and controlled change of configuration items throughout their lifecycle

Source

Generalised from systems engineering, software engineering, quality management, and configuration management usage, and specialized for the Crucible architecture and operational model.

Note

Configuration Management encompasses more than source code version control. Version control records revisions, while Configuration Management governs the identification, approval, status, relationship, realization, and change of configuration items.

A baseline records an approved configuration at a defined point in its lifecycle.

Example

A Software Factory applies Configuration Management to source repositories, build descriptions, machine-image definitions, infrastructure baselines, dependencies, compliance profiles, generated artifacts, and deployed environments. The resulting records identify the approved configuration and every controlled change applied to it.

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