From my 35 years of experience working for Aerospace & Defense contractors I have witnessed that some experienced engineers and program managers truly understand, and thus appreciate, the importance of Configuration Management and Data Management (CMDM) in their organizations. Yet, others still do not respect the CMDM function for a myriad of reasons I have encountered over the years. Some of these concerns are quite reasonable, while others not so much.

Over the past few years in our CMsights blog we have answered FAQs that we hear about Configuration Management and Configuration Management Software, especially from new product, project, or program managers. In our latest post we are sharing a Configuration Management blog bibliography – or “CM Blogography” – that we hope will be a quick reference compendium for those managers seeking to learn more about CM.

The implementation of configuration management must start with a well-conceived Configuration Management Plan. The CM Plan should address a number of elements important in the development, implementation, interoperability, usage, maintenance and evolution of an organization’s configuration management goals, vision, strategy, processes, best practices, desired competencies and supporting technologies including software.

This month’s CMsights shares CMstat Vice President Lisa Fenwick’s presentation from CMPIC’s CM Trends 2022 conference on “How Much Configuration Management is Good Enough?”

Learn what are the eight critical functions for “good CM” within the five foundational pillars of CM, such as Planning and Management, by downloading the presentation for immediate viewing.

This month’s CMsights looks at the why, what, who, and how of performing a Configuration Management Assessment (CMA). But first, what exactly is a CMA?

A CMA typically provides a fact-finding review and independent analysis of current CM-related processes, plans, performance gaps, best practices support, personnel competencies, standards adherence, and deployed software. A comprehensive CMA will also identify and prioritize prospective improvements to any elements found deficient.

There are numerous contributing factors which have caused the process of managing CDRLs (and SDRLs) to become not only a more arduous task, but at the same time increasingly important to the bottom-line performance of a DoD program or profitability of a supplier’s contract. Thankfully, as the efficient handling of CDRLs has become more demanding to orchestrate, best practices (BP) have emerged over recent years from a number of contractors, government agencies, industry associations, and CDRL data management software tool providers like CMstat.

After our last post on the Challenges of Implementing Configuration Management, a reader asked if the impediments to deploying configuration management were very different between a modest-size single-production facility versus a large multi-national multi-site enterprise. Our answer was both “No” and “Yes.”

Throughout CMstat’s history we have witnessed firsthand numerous obstacles that high-tech industries, like aerospace and defense, have experienced when implementing a Configuration Management (CM) strategy with supporting software tools. As with many new or rapidly-evolving technologies, most barriers in the successful deployment and adoption of CM are not overly technical in nature. Instead, they tend to be educational, organizational, procedural or contextual at their core.

Once upon a time, the process of managing Contract Data Requirement Lists (CDRL) and Subcontract Data Requirement Lists (SDRL) in support of government and commercial contracts in aerospace and defense was simple enough that data managers and project planners could perform most of what was required using spreadsheets.

What is the most frequent obstacle encountered by an organization developing, implementing, or repairing their Configuration Management strategy and execution? It is the misunderstanding among product managers, program managers, and business-line executives who think that change control management is configuration management. It is not!

In this month’s CMsights we begin to explore the value of a Configuration Management Assessment using configuration management maturity models developed specifically for the practice of CM. This follows our April 2020 article on Configuration Management Assessments. In that post, we presented an example configuration management checklist of questions that…

In the latest CMsights post we share a guest-authored article from Joseph Norton which illustrates the role of configuration management and CM standards like EIA-649 during a supply chain emergency such as that precipitated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Joe is a current member and past officer of the SAE G-33…

A frequent question we hear from aerospace and defense industry executives is how can they perform an assessment of the performance of their organizations, programs, and products with regard to the practice of Configuration Management. CMstat has learned over our several decades that the underlying concern of managers, which triggers…

We are often asked by Aerospace & Defense Project Managers why they can’t use engineering Product Data Management (PDM) software or enterprise Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) systems to satisfy all of their program's requirements for full-lifecycle Configuration Management. We originally addressed this topic in a 3-part series of CMsights articles…

A customer recently shared with us that a new-hire fresh out of engineering school asked, “Why do A&D programs need to perform so many reviews and audits; aren’t they obsolete or redundant in a world of continuous integration, AGILE development, model-based systems engineering, virtual prototyping, and digital twins?” The answer…

It is no secret that levels of technical complexity and financial risk have rapidly grown within nearly every function of a modern-day aerospace and defense (A&D) contractor’s program. Today’s A&D project managers are experiencing a crushing density of complexity due to a confluence of business drivers and technology trends. As…

In this month’s CMsights we asked Configuration Management practitioner, standards influencer, trainer, and author Kim Robertson to help us distill all the hype about digital twins and digital threads so we can understand their impact on as-maintained configuration management for long-life aerospace & defense equipment. Kim Robertson has over 39…

After the recent CMsights article on "What is a Configuration Management Plan" CMstat received several excellent questions about what should and should not go into a configuration management plan. Some readers were seeking help with developing a new CM plan from scratch, while others were attempting to perform a configuration…