Introducing configuration management in an organisation

Introducing configuration management in a company is a complex issue with many aspects. Both technical and organisational as well as human aspects have to be considered. Stentofon AS has just completed a project on introduction of configuration management in our organisation, and we would like to share some of our experiences with others. We did this work as a part of the SISU project, a Norwegian national research, development and technology transfer program. We participated in this project together with the industrial company TrioVing, and the research institute SINTEF DELAB. As a result of this work, we have established procedures for configuration management, changed some of our existing procedures and defined some tasks that need to be done in the near future. For the last couple of years the company has also made an effort to achieve ISO 9001 certification; we succeeded at this in November 1995. We have focused more on procedures than on tools, and we have made a stepwise approach to the issue, starting to establish configuration management for one major new product. We also want to put emphasise on the process in the company and the human aspects of the issue. It is important to establish configuration management thinking in the organisation, and you need to involve a lot of people, use quite a lot of time in discussions, and you must have the patience to argue and compromise without losing sight of the overall goal — a good configuration management system that everyone can benefit from.