Configuration Management: Essential Skill For An Organized Project

Configuration Management is a process for implementing and keeping congruity to the life cycle of the project. It also verifies that the project performs as intended. The project management life cycle has several main phases that need to be designed and plans that must be created. While

All the Project Management Processes should be included in the Project Management Plan as well as the steps to be taken as the project progresses, using every Project Management Knowledge Area to build an exceptional and useful plan to ensure a successful project. However, things change, requests are needed, and even with a change management plan set up, ground-shaking deliverable changes can alter the entire project. This is where Configuration Management comes in, and why it is such an essential skill to keep track of changes and updating the affected plans and ensuring that all of them continue to work in conjunction with one another to build a fully developed, optimized, and well designed plan that can keep the project alive and in scope.

In the paragraphs that follow, we will talk about the importance and function of one of these plans as an example. We will discuss, also, the importance and the role that the Configuration Management System plays to build and create a solid Project management process and system to confidently control and develop the project in budget and on schedule.

One of the most important roles is played by the plan that in fact manages plans. If you are taking the Project Management Professional (PMP) Training this is something very important to learn fully through a PMP Course. You have to have a solid knowledge of the plans of management if you are studying and preparing for the PMP Certification Exam which is controlled by the prestigious PMI (Project Management Institute).

What is the Configuration Management Plans Plan All About?

This plan is about your ability to manage and handle all  changes in the deliverables, along with editing and creating the corresponding documentation and tools the organization will need to employ to successfully manage these changes.

In the course of the process of planning all of it must be exhaustively designed,  and the requirements management strategy was completed and signed off on by the project manager and stakeholder. So, what changes? You may find yourself asking this question. Yes, changes are a common part of projects, because they are complex works. So we have the Change Management Plan, which is designed to control these changes. To add in guidelines and structures to prevent those changes from causing damage to the project as a whole.

Configuration Management’s intention is to manage the different versions of Project Management Plans, according to the PMP project management course. But let´s cover this topic in more detail.

Typically, for every change that we will make to the plans of the management, we need to develop a new version along with all the needed documentation. Let’s look at this example, we can name it version one point zero (1.0),  the initial draft of the Scope Plan Management, and when we make another update,  it can be named the one point one (1.1) version, and for the next update, it can be either one point two (1.2) or if it is a larger, more grandiose update the numerical order can be increased to name it two point zero (2.0), and so on and so forth.

While working on the project, there will be a time when we will have many new modified sets of the Plan Management, and the new sets will involve a new draft of the Plan of Project Management too. Let’s look at this example, the Plan of Project Management draft one point three (1.3) has the Plan of Scope Management draft two point two (2.2), the Schedule Management Plan draft one point five (1.5),  the Quality Management Plan one. point one (1.1), etc.

One change to the deliverables can create a huge amount of changes needed and developed plans, that the configuration management plan must control.

Even though this may appear to be difficult to you, the plan to configure the management contemplates this and it is designed to help you organize the way you carry out this versioning, which includes numbering systems, when a draft that is new is going to be released it can control the timing and if It is necessary to take a copy of the project management plan in its current form for future records and any needed requirements. The configuration management is there to protect the project and support a project manager in organizing these large changes to the project and its documentation. This means that the plan to configure the  management will guide you on how to keep track of changes in a project’s versioning, so there is no panic should these changes occur. All of the information needed to create this, for each plan, will be described in this configuration plan.

Remember, the system for managing configurations is designed to help you manage the versioning of strategies for project management, components of the  project, and documents. Skipping this step can cause a big headache if a project deliverable is changed further down the road.

The system itself may consist of a System for Managing Change. As a result, adopting a new draft of a document, or changing a component of the project is defined as “a change”. For this reason, in a company, Configuration management systems may include change control systems.

Keep in mind that the Project Management Information System includes a Configuration Management System (PMIS). Because It contains tools, techniques, and procedures for configuration management that are standardized across projects, something which a Project Manager should learn from and get as much experience in as possible.

All of them are described as procedures, common rules, and policies on how to conduct project versioning. That is to say, all you need to know about how to handle changes in a project and control how versioning is used. It will be described and included in the  Configuration Management System

What we have learned in this piece  is the definition of system and configuration management strategies. If you need more info on them, these essential topics of how to manage a project can be found in online PMP Courses that delve deeply into the PMP exam, and provides all the needed PDUs to be eligible to take the PMP exam and are designed by experts in Project Management. With this knowledge, you will be able to boost the success of your project as a project manager and career as a whole.

Understanding the information in this article is an essential part of project management and a vital part of the PMP exam. Improve your project management skills or prepare for the PMP Certification exam by taking a quality online PMP exam prep course.