Configuration Management Process Guide

Configuration management process guides are not all that common and it is difficult to give you an insight into the Configuration management process within the space I am allowed, so I will keep this as succinct as possible!

Configuration management process guide – the Activities

The activities of Configuration Management are as follows:

• Planning. Planning and defining the purpose, scope, objectives, policies and procedures, and the organizational and technical context, for Configuration Management.
• Identification. Selecting and identifying the configuration structures for all the infrastructure's CIs, including their 'owner', their interrelationships and configuration documentation. It includes allocating identifiers and version numbers for CIs, labeling each item, and entering it on the Configuration Management Database (CMDB).
• Control. Ensuring that only authorized and identifiable CIs are accepted and recorded, from receipt to disposal. It ensures that no CI is added, modified, replaced or removed without appropriate controlling documentation, e.g. an approved Change request, and an updated specification.
• Status accounting. The reporting of all current and historical data concerned with each CI throughout its life cycle. This enables Changes to CIs and their records to be traceable, e.g. tracking the status of a CI as it changes from one state to another for instance 'under development', 'being tested', 'live', or 'withdrawn'.
• Verification and audit. A series of reviews and audits that verify the physical existence of CIs and check that they are correctly recorded in the Configuration Management system.  

Configuration management process guide – the Configuration Baseline

A Configuration baseline is the configuration of a product or system established at a specific point in time, which captures both the structure and details of a configuration. It serves as reference for further activities.

A configuration baseline is also a snapshot, or a position, that is recorded. Although the position may be updated later, the configuration baseline remains fixed as the original state and is thus available to be compared with the current position.

A configuration baseline is used to assemble all relevant components in readiness for a Change or Release, and to provide the basis for a configuration audit and regression, e.g. after a Change. The Configuration Management system should be able to save, protect and report on a configuration baseline, its contents and documentation.

Really this is the tip of the iceberg, as then we need to consider license management, software and document libraries etc. However, what you do have here is the ‘core’ of Configuration Management.