Configuration Management and Change Control

Change control and configuration management.

 

Any issues which arise pre-project in the Starting Up a Project process, are captured in the Daily Log and managed by the project manager.  However, when the project is in the initiating stage, the Initiating a Project process creates the Configuration Management Strategy, and at the same time creates the Issue Register.

These are the project controls for managing issues, changes and configuration management.  There are also a range of management products that support this, and they are: Configuration Item Records, Product Status Accounts, and Issue Reports.  These are in addition to the three management products mentioned above.

 

Every project needs a configuration management system that supports impact assessments, the relationships between products, and maintains products baselines, the basis on which the entity will change.  

 

The first step is for a project to determine if there are any corporate or programme policies and processes that should be applied, and ensure that they are built into the Configuration Management Strategy Document.

 

The Configuration Management Strategy Document should include the following information:

 

The Configuration Management Procedure to be used and any common terminology, the procedure for managing issues and change control, tools, techniques, and records that will be kept, how the procedure performance will be reported, timing of key configuration management activities, issue and change control activities, and the roles and responsibilities for configuration management and issue and change control activities.

 

Since the Configuration Management Strategy defines the way that issues are to be dealt with, then the project board and project manager needs to agree a scale for prioritising issues, a scale for rating the severity of issues, and which management levels can handle which levels of issue severity.  

 

As an example the project board may consider delegating the authority for dealing with requests to change or off specifications to a Change Authority.

 

Another consideration that needs to be decided in the initiation stage, is whether the project board will set up a Change Budget to fund the cost of requests for change, and may be even their analysis costs.  

 

If a change authority is to be set up, then the project board will need to determine the rules of engagement, for example the maximum cost of any single change.  If such a budget is used it should be documented in the relevant plan.

 

Configuration Item Records. These describe information such as the status, version and variant of each configuration item and described in the important relationships between each item, for example a physical relationship as in a bottle and its cap.

 

Product Status Account.  This provides information about the state of products within defined limits, for example the whole project, a specific stage, or a type of product.  It is a report usually called for by either Project assurance all the project manager wishing to confirm the latest status of a range of products.

 

Issues can be dealt with formally or informally, if the latter then the Daily Log will be used to record and manage such issues.  For all formal issues, the Issue Register will be used.  Whenever an issue is logged on the Issue Register, it will be accompanied by an Issue Report.

 

The Issue Register is used to capture and maintain information on all formal issues.  The Issue Report contains the description, impact assessment and recommendations for any requests for change, specification or a problem concern.

 

For more information on PRINCE2 -  GO HERE