Configuration management

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Configuration Management ( KM ; English configuration management , CM ) is a management discipline , the organizational and behavioral rules to the life cycle of a product, and its configuration units of development and manufacturing support up to apply for disposal.

Basics

In this context, configuration unit means “any combination of hardware , software or service ”. Configuration management is therefore not tied to a specific application context and system configuration per se . Configuration management takes place within a so-called configuration management process (KMP), this requires organization and planning (KMO).

There are four sub-areas (sub-processes) of the KM:

  • Configuration identification (KI),
  • Configuration bookkeeping (KB),
  • Configuration monitoring (KÜ) and
  • Configuration audit (KA).

Their coordinated implementation is essential for successful configuration management.

history

The trigger for the establishment and development of the KM was the steadily increasing product complexity. In response to problems resulting from this (e.g. perceived uncontrollability), KM was developed as a solution in the aerospace industry in the 1950s . At this point in time, the implementation was carried out using simple cards that indicated the status of a configuration.

As a result, similar complexity problems also emerged in other product areas. Accordingly, the methods and instruments of KM have been refined and specialized for various areas of application. KM implementations are now part of many more far-reaching management disciplines, for example product data management or software configuration management in the field of IT .

Definition according to ANSI

ANSI ( American National Standards Institute ) has published the following definition in collaboration with EIA ( Electronic Industries Alliance ), which is widely recognized as generally applicable: " Configuration Management ... is a management process for establishing and maintaining consistency of a product's performance, its functional and physical attributes, with its requirements, design and operational information, throughout its life. "

In German:

" Configuration management is a management process for establishing and maintaining a conformity of the product performance as well as the functional and physical properties of the product with the requirements , the product design and the operational information during the entire product life cycle . "

The latest internationally adopted definition is provided by ISO 10007: 2003: " configuration management coordinated activities to direct and control configuration" - where " configuration " is to be understood as "interrelated functional and physical characteristics of a product defined in product configuration information ". Product configuration information, in turn, is defined as "requirements for product design, realization, verification, operation and support".

In German:

Under configuration management refers to "coordinated activities for the management and routing of configurations". A configuration is thus the sum of "interconnected functional and physical features of a product, as they are described in the product configuration information ". A product configuration description therefore consists of the "requirements for development, implementation, verification, functionality and support of the product".

aims

The aim of the KM is to document the degree of fulfillment of physical and functional requirements for a configuration unit and to create full transparency in this regard. This should also ensure that each party involved in a configuration unit uses the correct and applicable information.

Conceptual sub-areas

KMO - Organization and planning of configuration management

As part of the KMO, the organizational and technical specifications for KI, KB, KÜ and KA are made. This can be done both project and product specific. Essential decisions concern the selection of the tools to be used, the assignment of tasks to be performed to the responsible authorities as well as their information rights and obligations and the establishment of process definitions. In addition, the auditing of the overall system to check compliance and effectiveness of the decisions made is the responsibility of the KMO.

AI - configuration identification

KI is the prerequisite for performing KB, KA, and KÜ. It includes the selection of configuration units, their breakdown into a product structure , documentation and numbering for the purpose of clear identification . Essential questions relate to the granularity of a configuration unit, the definition of reference configurations (baselines) and the selection of a numbering system.

KÜ - configuration monitoring

KÜ addresses problems that result from changing a configuration. The central activity is therefore change management. The aim of this is to identify, describe, classify, evaluate, approve and introduce all changes to configuration units and their associated documents. The entity equipped with the appropriate competencies and powers is referred to as the Change Control Board (CCB) . Meaningful configuration monitoring requires a fixed, formal process for handling changes. Usual process steps are the application, evaluation, decision, commissioning, review of the implemented changes and approval. All steps are documented as standardized as possible. Relevant documents in this context are the change request, the minutes of the CCB and the change order. The reference object for change management is a reference configuration. At a certain point in time, this represents the valid configuration together with all changes released up to that point.

KB - configuration accounting

The process of the configuration bookkeeping aims at the traceable documentation of the configurations and configuration units. It should therefore make sense to start with the first creation of configuration data. The KB covers all data for configuration identification and monitoring.

KA - configuration audit

A configuration audit is the formal review of configurations with regard to the fulfillment of contractually guaranteed functional and physical features as well as the conformity of the implemented product and the associated configuration documentation. In this sense, a distinction is made between functional and physical configuration audits. Configuration audits can be carried out for entire configurations as well as for individual configuration units. A configuration audit should be carried out especially before a reference configuration is determined.

Methods and tools for the configuration accounting of software

Manual methods of configuration accounting

For a functioning version management it is required to assign a unique identification to each version of an element (file, source code, document, specification etc.).

Manual procedures on the file system could e.g. B. Include date, time, release designation and the current processor in the file name, such as KM_Kolleg_20050505_1715_Keller_1.0.doc. A copy of the file with the updated name stamp is created for each subsequent status. This method is useful for documents, but fails when managing program sources or HTML documents because changing file names for tools or web delivery are difficult to handle.

A remedy for program files can be found by copying the information into the files as comments. To back up the different versions, copies must also be made here and stored in appropriately designated directories. However, this procedure also fails with HTML files.

Another possibility would be an additional text file with the identification stamps of the individual files. However, all procedures are very error-prone and the user is not supported in carrying out the processes. The date stamps of the operating systems are also not suitable for identification, depending on the operating system or tool.

Managing the configuration of files requires good user discipline and well-marked directories. The number of copies and the space required increases very quickly.

Configuration bookkeeping with professional tools

Professional configuration management tools use archiving procedures that solve this problem and support the processes in a meaningful way for the user. Only the differences in the file status are usually saved in an archive file using the "reverse delta" process .

Advanced configuration management tools use an object-oriented concept and database technologies to manage versions. The version numbering and also other information such as the person responsible, the time of modification, a "label" or an attribute of an object to be archived are included. The history is stored as a relationship in the database. With advanced configuration management tools, configurations of the system can also be recorded in the archive with clear identification, without the individual elements being present multiple times in the database. These tools also offer regulated access control so that concurrent changes to an element by different editors are either not allowed at all or - if they have been allowed - are not lost, but can be merged in a controlled manner using merge mechanisms. For more complex projects, tool support in the area of ​​configuration management is urgently recommended.

Examples of version management tools

The following systems offer support for versioning:

  • CVS and SVN ( free software , very common in open source software development)
  • Bazaar , git and mercurial as distributed source management systems (the so-called third generation). There are input and output options between these tools and CVS, so that data can also be exchanged with different tools.
  • codeBeamer from Intland Software (commercial)
  • Kovair ALM from Kovair
  • Polarion ALM by Polarion Software (commercial)
  • Microsoft Team Foundation Server (commercial)
  • Fossil SCM , a simple distributed software configuration management system (free and open source)

They are suitable to a limited extent for managing configurations.

Examples of configuration management tools

See also

literature

  • [DIN] - DIN - GERMAN INSTITUTE FOR STANDARDIZATION eV (Ed.): DIN EN ISO 10007: 1996 Quality Management - Guidelines for Configuration Management (ISO10007: 1995) Trilingual version EN ISO 10007: 1996. Berlin: Beuth Verlag, 1996
  • [ISO] - ISO - International Organization for Standardization . ISO 10007: 2003: Quality management systems - Guidelines for configuration management.
  • The currently valid DIN standard is: Quality management - guidelines for configuration management (ISO 10007: 2003) DIN ISO 10007: 2004-12 or ÖNORM ISO 10007: 2005 06 01
  • Colin Hood, Simon Wiedemann, Stefan Fichtinger, Urte Pautz Requirements Management: Interface Between Requirements Development and All Other Systems Engineering Processes. Chapter 7, Springer, Berlin 2007, ISBN 3-540-47689-X .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ When disposing of a. for reasons of environmental protection, especially the (environmentally damaging) materials used in the product are of interest.
  2. ↑ cf. DIN, p. 7
  3. ↑ ANSI / EIA-649-B
  4. ↑ http://www.intland.com/
  5. ↑ Application Lifecycle Management, ALM, DevOps Integration Tools - Kovair. Retrieved April 18, 2019 (American English).
  6. ↑ http://www.polarion.com/
  7. ↑ http://fossil-scm.org/
  8. ↑ Here, different open source systems were compared: Comparison of open source configuration management software
  9. ↑ http://www.ptc.com//
  10. ↑ Dimensions CM. Retrieved May 8, 2020 .
  11. ↑ Report ESG Bundeswehr | - ( Memento from February 24, 2016 in the Internet Archive )