Configuration management
Configuration management (CM ) is a management discipline, the organizational and behavioral rules on the product life cycle of a configuration unit applies of its development through manufacturing and support.
- 6.1 Manual methods of configuration accounting
- 6.2 Configuration accountancy with professional tools
Basics
Configuration unit in this context means an " any combination of hardware, software, or service '. Configuration management is therefore not bound per se to a specific application context and a system configuration. Configuration management is done within a so-called configuration management process ( KMP ), this requires the organization and planning ( KMO ).
They are divided in four sub-regions ( sub-processes ) of KM:
- Configuration Identification ( CI),
- Configuration accounting (KB )
- Configuration control ( CT ) and
- Configuration Audit ( KA).
Your co-ordinated implementation is essential for a successful configuration management.
History
Trigger for the establishment and development of KM was the ever-increasing product complexity. In response to the ensuing problems (eg, perceived uncontrollability ) KM was developed in the 1950s in the aviation and space industry as a possible solution. Instrument of implementation at this stage were simple card that marked the status of a configuration.
Similar complexity problems showed up in a row in other product areas. Accordingly, the methods and tools of KM for different applications have been refined and specialized. KM implementations are now part of many more far-reaching management disciplines, for example, product data management, or in the field of computer science of software configuration management.
Definition according to ANSI
ANSI (American National Standards Institute ) has published in cooperation with EIA ( Electronic Industries Alliance) the following definition which is widely recognized as generally valid: " 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. "
To German:
"Configuration management is a management process for the production and maintenance of a compliance of the product deliverables, and the functional and physical characteristics of the product with the requirements, product design and operational information throughout the product lifecycle. "
The latest internationally adopted definition specifies the ISO 10007:2003: " configuration management coordinated activities to direct and control configuration" where " configuration inter- related functional and physical characteristics of a product defined in product configuration information" is. Product configuration information is in turn defined as "requirements for product design, realization, verification, operation and support".
To German:
Under Configuration management means " coordinated activities to direct and control of configurations ." A configuration is thus the sum " of interconnected functional and physical characteristics of a product, as described in the product configuration information ." Therefore, a product configuration description consists of the "Requirements for development, implementation, verification, functionality and support of the product."
Objectives
The aim of KM is to document the degree of fulfillment of physical and functional requirements of a configuration unit, and in this respect to ensure full transparency. This should also mean that any person involved in a configuration unit shall use the correct and accurate documentation.
Conceptual subregions
KMO - organization and planning of the configuration management
As part of the KMO the organizational and technical specifications on KI, KB, CT and KA are taken. This can be done both project- and product- specific. Major decisions concerning the selection of tools to be used, the allocation of tasks to be fulfilled in PTAs and their information rights and obligations and the definition of process definitions. In addition, the auditing of the entire system to verify compliance with and effectiveness of the decisions taken by the KMO falls to.
AI - Configuration identification
AI is a prerequisite for the implementation of KB, KA, and CT. It includes the selection of configuration items, their structure to a product structure, documentation and number formation for the purpose of unique identification. Essential questions related to the granularity of a configuration unit, the establishment of reference configurations ( baselines ) and the selection of a number system.
CT - Monitoring configuration
CT addressed problems arising from the change of a configuration. Therefore central activity represents the change management, value whose goal is to identify all changes to configuration items and their associated documents, describe, classify, evaluate, approve and implement. The equipped with appropriate skills and powers instance is called the configuration Committee (English Change Control Board (CCB ) ). Meaningful configuration monitoring requires committed, formal process for the treatment of changes. Typical process steps are the application, evaluation, decision, contracting, Review of implemented changes and release. All steps are possible standardized documented. In this context, relevant documents are amendment, the minutes of the CCB and change order. Reference object for change management is a reference configuration. At any given time, this along with all previously released changes the valid configuration dar.
KB - Configuration accounting
The process of configuring accounting has the traceable documentation of configurations and configuration units to the destination. You should therefore makes sense to use already with the first generation of configuration data. Subject of the KB are all data for configuration identification and monitoring.
KA - Configuration Audit
A configuration audit is a formal examination of configurations with respect to the fulfillment of contractually guaranteed functional and physical characteristics as well as the compliance of the realized product and associated configuration documentation. We distinguish between functional and physical configuration audits in this sense. Configuration audits can also select individual configuration items are performed for both configurations as a whole. In particular the establishment of a reference configuration, a configuration audit should be instituted.
Methods and tools for configuration accounting software
Manual methods of configuration accounting
For a working version management is required to assign each state of an element (file, source code, document, specification, etc. ) has a unique identification.
Manual operations on the file system could for example Date, time, release name and the current processor in the filename include, for example, in KM_Kolleg_20050505_1715_Keller_1.0.doc. For any other state, a copy of the file with the updated name stamp is applied. This technique is useful for documents, but fails in the management of program sources or HTML documents, since changing file names for tools or web deployment are difficult to handle.
You can remedy the situation in program files in that you copied the information as comments in the files. To secure the different stalls here copies must be made and these are stored in appropriately labeled folders. But this method also fails HTML files.
Another possibility would be an additional text file containing the identification stamp of the individual files. However, all methods are prone to error and the user is not supported in the implementation of the processes. The date stamp of the operating systems are not suitable, depending on the operating system or tool for identification.
To manage configuration files, it requires good discipline of the user and accurately labeled directories. The number of copies and the space requirement increases very quickly.
Configuration accounting with professional tools
Professional configuration management tools use archiving methods that resolve this problem and support the process for the user useful. There are usually saved with " reverse delta" method in an archive file, only the differences between the file versions.
Advanced configuration management tools use an object-oriented concept and database technologies for the management of versions. Here are the version numbers and other details such as editors, modification date, a "label" or attribute of an object to be archived. The history is stored as the relation in the database. Configurations of the system can also be noted with advanced configuration management tools with clearly identifiable in the archive, without the individual elements while multiple are present in the database. These tools also provide a controlled access control, so that competing changes of various agents on an element either not allowed or - if they were allowed - do not get lost, but controlled with merge mechanisms can be merged. For more complex projects, a tool support in the area of configuration management is strongly recommended.
The following systems provide support during versioning:
- CVS and SVN (free software, very common in open-source development of software)
- Bazaar, git and mercurial as a distributed source management systems ( the so-called third generation). There are input and output capabilities between these tools and CVS, so that a data exchange with different tools is possible.
- CodeBeamer of Intland software ( commercial)
- Polarion ALM by Polarion Software ( commercial)
- PTC Integrity of Parametric Technology Corporation ( commercial)
- Rational Synergy IBM ( commercial)
- Team Foundation Server from Microsoft ( commercial)
To manage configurations, they are conditionally suitable.