Configuration Management is Quality! Today let’s look at #Quality. Depending who you ask you will get a different definition of what quality is. Some would say it is whatever the customer says it is, but that makes it rather fuzzy. I prefer to state that Quality = Conformance to Requirements. Requirements are a good way to capture what the customer wants but also what your company wants to bring to… Read More »Configuration Management is… Quality!
#ConfigurationManagement is… #ImpactAnalysis! It has been a while since a posted a CM is… post. Today I want to highlight Impact Analysis. A critical capability in the #ChangeProcess is Impact Analysis. It provides not only insight in the technical #impact but also in the business impact of the change. What is the #cost and what are the #benefits. Also it should help answer the question: What happens if you do… Read More »Configuration Management is… Impact Analysis!
#ConfigurationManagement is… #BusinessAgility! In the #Future of #CM newsletter we (Florian Böhme, Jean-Hervé POISSON, Lucas Heckmann, Badia Dandana, Chris Seiler, and myself) have written multiple articles about CM+Agile. One thing is clear in all these articles, doing CM well is foundational for being #agile. CM is the #thread that ties everything together. If your thread is weak, it will break and instead of being agile as a speedboat, your organization… Read More »Configuration Management is… Business Agility!
#ConfigurationManagement is… #ProcessIntegration! This one was suggested by Zoran Marinkovic. He nailed that one! Configuration Management is a supporting function in an organization. It will impact almost all other functions. This means that #CM must be integrated into processes across an organization. Whether it is an engineer that issues a new part and applies naming conventions properly to a field engineer that accurately updates the configuration as maintained baselines. CM… Read More »Configuration Management is… Process Integration
#ConfigurationManagement is… #Planning! Planning is an essential part of #CM. Not only planning the implementation of changes, but also the planning of the evolution of your #ConfigurationItems. Planning provides an outlook of what is to come and supports in the alignment and #collaboration between different teams. It also allows you to be proactive in identifying #dependencies and mitigating #risks. What do you think? Join the conversation on LinkedIn.
#ConfigurationManagement is… #Communication! After talking about CM is… #ChangeControl, it is time to address a very important aspect of CM, which is Communication. #Changes are almost never isolated to a single function. This means that communication is key to ensure a change is successfully implemented. Not only is Communication critical to the success of Configuration Management and the implementation of changes, Configuration Management also streamlines communication & #collaboration across functions… Read More »Configuration Management is… Communication
#ConfigurationManagement is… #ChangeControl! #Change is the only constant. Changes are the vehicles for improvements. But without guardrails you will spin out of control. Where #Identification ensures you are able to identify and link all data artifacts, #ChangeManagement ensures you remain in control. Change control not only means you follow a process, at doing things first time right, it also means you ensure people focus on the changes that bring the… Read More »Configuration Management is… Change Control
#ConfigurationManagement is… #Accountability! Previous post was about #Ownership. Without ownership there is no accountability and accountability will lead to #Integrity of your configuration information. As mentioned by Ray Wozny from the Institute for Process Excellence: “I would say that accountability must exist with ownership. Accountability is not a negative word, it’s pride in our work, willingness to listen and respond when necessary.” I could not have said it any better.… Read More »Configuration Management is… Accountability
#ConfigurationManagement is… #Ownership! In my previous posts I focused on #Identification, Part Re-Identification, #ProductStructures, #Trust, and #Integrity of data. But you will not be able to achieve this without having proper Ownership of the data in place. Ownership is not that 10 high level managers need to sign off on a design. Ownership is about the #Creators and #Users of the data. A design or any other kind of dataset… Read More »Configuration Management is… Ownership
#ConfigurationManagement is… #Trust In my previous posts I talked about #Integrity of the configuration information is critical. Because in the end it is about the ability to trust your data. The moment the integrity of you data is compromised and bad data starts to flow in or gaps start to occur in your baselines. The value of this data starts to decrease very fast (exponentially), because you can no longer… Read More »Configuration Management is… Trust