1. Usually, CM planning procedure involves requirements management, analysis and quality assurance planning, implementation and source control, testing, integration and release management. In turbulent times it's possible to start with the quality assurance stage, and when possible - add the earlier stages (requirements and analysis) to the plans, but nevertheless it's important to put a "place holder" for them.
2. Start planning from the most urgent tasks for every stakeholder in the organization. Later, when times calm down, do the rest.
3. Think as a businessman: start planning from tasks that gives high and immediate ROI, like traceability between source control and release management; automation of builds, etc.
4. Set generic processes and flowcharts which will be suitable for your organization with minimal customization, and, when necessary, customize them more tightly in the future.
   

The following standards-based table, taken directly from the IEEE 828 Standard (CM Planning), shows the re-organization changes:

Summary
The plans should coexist with the business reality of the organization: schedules, budgets, resources and required contents for a release of satisfying product, but more important - to the people, the stakeholders. Do not ignore the people and their needs. A planning process, that fails to take into account people's needs, will cause objections and eventually will not be followed at all.

Tamir Gefen is a consultant specializing in End-to-End Configuration Management and Application Lifecycle Management. Tamir has 10 years experience as a technical manager in several top Israeli and global Services firms where he had company-wide responsibility for CM and ALM processes, IT infrastructures and software development, providing hands-on technical support for enterprise Source Code Management tools, continuous integration and automated application deployment. Tamir is the founder of "GoMidjets" company which provides CM turnkey solutions and services. Tamir holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Musicology from Bar-Ilan University and IBM Rational certification. You may contact Tamir Gefen at tgefen@gomidjets.com , http://www.linkedin.com/in/tgefen or his company http://www.GoMidjets.com

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Frank Schophuizen said:

... Good article get me thinking, but I have some points I do not agree with: - CM planning does not involve requirement management, analysis and quality assurance planning. It does involve the identification of the items that need to be controlled for requirement management, etc. - It may be more practical to start from the essential workflows for stakeholders, or even better the flow of essential data and goods between stakeholders, instead of the (most urgent) tasks. - For a businessman, business continuity is more important than high and immediate ROI. For example, shipping a working system to the customer brings high and immediate ROI, but if the configuration cannot be reproduced reliably the costs for the next delivery may annihilate the initial gains. CM needs to focus on medium and long term benefits. The fourth point is a good one, and I would like to stress its importance extra! Customizations are always more expensive in the long run than an expensive CM tool. Select a tool that seems to fit your needs best (regardless of the price), install it and use it as the tool is designed to be used. People are more flexible to adopt a way of working than tools. And one final note: CM planning is okay, but the essence of CM is doing it. In most cases, it's the doing CM that goes wrong. IMO it is arguable whether better CM planning would really improve that.

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January 11, 2009
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