Experimental Introduction of a Configuration Management Model for an Open Control System

By the term configuration management (CM), the ISG means all methods, tools, and CM aids, which support the development and maintenance of a software product as a succession of controlled revisions and supplementation based on safe process results.

By introducing CM products (e.g. CM plan, CIDs, change forms) ISG is able to access all information concerning all existing software elements at any time. The realisation of these objectives belongs to the overall goal of improving the customer support. Setting up the configuration administration will lead to the main savings in administration effort within the software development process. As a consequence the attention of this experiment will be turned to monitoring this expected improvement. Due to the clear assignment of configuration identification documents (CID) to each software element, the degree of reused software elements can be increased.

The introduction of the so called "change management" will lead to the most extensive changes within the current software development process. By adopting the ISG's effective data backup strategy to the CM model and by introducing a detailed CM reporting the maintenance of earlier released versions can be guaranteed to customers.