PLCS Statement of Technical Requirements. Technical Requirements Product Life Cycle Support. Configuration Management, страница 10

The CI process establishes a comprehensive system of identification for a product and related items. CI answers the question "What is the product” to the level required by the business context in question. All products whose configuration is to be managed are assigned unique identifiers.  This is done to enable one product to be distinguished from another; one assembly of a product to be distinguished from another assembly and to match related items to the product or assembly to which they apply. Identification may need to be provided of the as-required, as-designed, as-build, as-used configuration of product, and its components and related items. CI provides the foundation for all other CM activities.

4.2.2.2  Configuration Change Control (CC)

To maintain control of configuration, all changes to a product must be managed in a systematic way. CC regulates the proposal, justification, evaluation, and co-ordination of all proposed changes to a configuration item and its related documentation. CC ensures the regulation of the flow, impact, and release of changes to a configuration item and related documentation. CC answers the question: "What changes are proposed, approved, or incorporated?"

4.2.2.3  Configuration Status Accounting (CSA)

CSA is the activity of maintaining an accurate record of product configuration. CSA records the current status of any product, its structure, the history of any change within an integrated and coherent information base.

4.2.2.4  Configuration Audit (CA)

CA verifies that the item is in compliance with its corresponding configuration information. CA answers the questions: "Is the item built according to the design? Does the item do what it is supposed to do?"

4.2.2.5  Configuration Item

Configuration Items are products to which an organization intends to apply Configuration Management control. They may also be defined as items to which control by version number will be applied.

The identification of the Configuration Items is dependent on viewpoints. Different life-cycle organizations may have different views over what configuration items they need to manage.

For example:

·  the user may decide that he will control configuration of physical product instance while the product design configuration control will be the responsibility of the equipment supplier;

·  the main contractor may decide not to maintain configuration control of items supplied by a subcontractor.

In any case, a standardized interface is needed to exchange consistently configuration information across different users of the system.

There are three different kind of products that may need to be defined as Configuration Items: (1) Physical Products, (2) Documents, and  (3) Software.  Configuration Items may be identified in two different contexts:  (1) a Conceptual, or Design, State, and  (2) a Realized State.

·  Physical Product as a Configuration Item: ‘A thing or substance that is produced by natural or artificial process’.   The conceptual state of physical products is the AS-Designed view of a Product. The realised state is the manufactured product or Product Instance.

·  Document as a Configuration Item: ‘A body of information or data that can be packaged for delivery on a single medium. Some examples of documents are engineering drawings, CAD models, databases, computer files reports, video clips, tapes.’   Documents have relevance as Configuration Items for two reasons: (1) a document may be a Configuration Item, within a configuration structure; (2) a document (e.g. Technical Manuals) may contain Configuration Items, either as sub-documents, or as physical product (e.g. a CD Rom). The conceptual state of a document is a digital file or a set of digital files. Its realised state is the representation on paper or on a computer screen using the appropriate application (CAD programs, SGML or HTML Browser, Video Player, DBMS Query). A document may have more than one document representation and some of these may be electronic while others are not. All document representations of a particular conceptual document must have the same information content, although the presentation format (both electronic and visual style) may vary.