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 speak with Lisa Fenwick, Vice President of Product Development for CMstat, to better understand what exactly is Change Implementation Planning and Verification. It’s a timely topic because many product and project managers are justifiably confused by the overlapping terms change control, change management, change implementation…

Our latest CMsights post begins a series on the most common lessons that CMstat has seen our software customers and consulting clients learn over the years from implementing configuration management (CM). These include lessons learned – both easy and hard - that are applicable to a small project, complete product line, major program…

Questions regarding the differences between Configuration Management (CM) and Change Management (also CM) arise so often that we decided to address it in a CMsights post. It is not uncommon that a new A&D program manager or engineering lead may think that configuration management and change management are synonyms. If…

The Top Questions Executives Should Ask Their Organization In our last CMsights post we presented the case that Product Configuration Governance (PCG) deserves more attention from the executive office suite beyond what it receives from configuration management (CM) practitioners. But how does a product line executive know when issues of…

The surest way for A&D managers to become interested in CM is when production halts because of a missed change order, a supplier ships to an old rev level, logistics can’t source replacement parts, field service starts submitting warranty claims, and a customer calls to report a product performance anomaly. Or worse yet, when executives first hear about a product failure in social media or on the news because it bore catastrophic consequences.