Configuration Management Systems Design

Configuration Management systems design can be a laborious task, particularly, if you are going from nothing to having a Configuration Management system in place. After appointing a Configuration Management team you will need to analyze any existing systems you have in place.

Configuration Management systems design – analyze existing systems!

From organizations having no processes at all, some organizations now have many Configuration Management processes and procedures. These may be embedded in other procedures or be specific to one team. If one of the objectives is to introduce a common Configuration Management system with consistent processes, an important activity is to identify and analyze the following:

• Owners of high-level CIs.
• Current scope and resources (people and tools).
• Current Change Management and Configuration Management practices, processes and procedures.
• High-level configuration data held in current inventories, hard copy, local spreadsheets or databases.
• Roles, responsibilities and capabilities of staff involved in Configuration Management.

Configuration Management systems design – develop a plan and design the system

Some organizations give control to support groups that have expertise in a particular technology or platform, because it may not be cost-effective to train central staff in specialist areas. In these cases, the support group manager is responsible for the control of CIs owned and maintained by the group.

The organization's procedures for Change Management, Configuration Management, Release Management and a centralized CMDB should be adopted wherever possible.

Configuration Management systems design – develop the Change and Configuration management Plans together

These may be defined in a Change and Configuration Management plan for the organization and be supported by functional and design documents for the Configuration Management system.

The relationships between the plans should be documented to help staff see the context of Configuration Management within their group, with the manager of each group signing off its plan. Lower-level plans should align with, and refer up to, the higher-level plans so as to avoid duplication.

Configuration Management systems design – remember… process first!

Although there will be situations where organizations' Configuration Management responsibilities will be devolved to individual areas with specific expertise, the ideal is to have a centralized function if resources permit; this ensures common processes and procedures. Devolution, on the other hand, needs careful management and regular auditing for compliance. It is always imperative that there is only one process owner - and this is even more important if there are a number of disparate groups performing Configuration Management.