Website Development – Configuration Management

Configuration Management

Introduction

For eBay Shop Owners who have decided to set up their own websites, controlling the development process can be a daunting prospect. That’s why we’ve published these guidelines that are based on the processes used by large corporations to develop their websites.

Configuration Management procedures cover the aspects of identification, accounting and control of Configuration Items in a software project. In a software project, the Configuration Items are of two categories - documents and source code. The procedures outlined in these sections cover both these categories.

An important part of Configuration Management is establishing and monitoring Baselines. The actual Baselines for a project are identified in the Configuration Management Plan (CMP). The CMP is part of the Project Plan. A baseline is a snapshot of the configuration items that are in sync with each other. A project should have a minimum of two baselines. These are called the “Initial baseline” and the “Release Baseline”. These baselines give a picture of the configuration items that are in sync with each other at the start and end of the project.

A Configuration Item is a document or program, changes for which need to be tracked and controlled. The CMP will identify all the Configuration Items for a project.

In the following sections, the procedures for Configuration Identification, accounting and Change Control will be provided.

Refer Appendix - C2: Notes for notes, including examples, to understand the concept of Configuration Management.

Policy

Policies governing project configuration management are:

· Every project has a skilled/trained configuration controller assigned to perform the configuration management activities

· Configuration management is implemented throughout the project

· All customer supplied products, interim work products, plans, estimates, development and deployment environments, tools and external deliverables will be brought under configuration management

· Identified configuration items are placed in pre-defined repositories

· Project manager shall identify a change control board

· Software baseline audits are performed by QA on pre-defined basis

· Adequate resources are provided to perform configuration management activities

· Project team are skilled/trained to perform their configuration management activities

· Changes to configuration items are handled in a controlled manner using versioning scheme

Configuration Control Board and Controller

For every project, the Project Manager shall identify the Configuration Control Board (CCB) headed by a Configuration Controller. By default, the Project Manager will be the Configuration Controller (CC) for the project. However, the Project Manager can assign any other person as CC for the project. The Configuration Control Board is responsible for carrying out the Configuration Management activities in the project.

Baseline audits and SCM audits

The Project Manager shall conduct periodic (typically at the end of each phase/ before release) baseline audits on the CCB to see if the registers and CII have been updated. Refer Appendix – C1: Checklist-Baseline Audit.

The SQA team in turn shall audit the SCM process implementation (including check on the baseline audits) in their audits at the end of each phase.

These are scheduled activities need to be included as part of the scheduled plan.

Configuration Identification & Accounting

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