Standards? Who needs standards?

My mom had a heart attack about a year or so ago. Naturally, I told her that she had to move into my home and live with me at least until she was able to take care of herself again. Fortunately, we had enough room on our property and we had construction started to make mom a nice comfortable granny suite that would allow her some privacy and still be only a few feet away from her grandchildren who were always glad to help her with anything that she needed. During this time we had lots of tools around. Some of them were expensive big old trucks and others were fancy carpenter's tools. The funny thing is that I didn't know how to use them. 

Often standards and frameworks are very hard to read and understand. Standards are wisdom - shared by experts - who have had many years of valuable experience.  But unless you understand how to use these tools, they won't do you or your organization any good at all. Some of the standards that your should know about for CM are:

1. IEEE 828 CM Plan
2. IEEE 12207 which gives information on lifecycles including CM
3. EIA 649-A - CM (note that this standard states that it cannot be used for compliance)
4. Cobit controls - Change Management and Configuration Management (hint - Bob love's Cobit)
5. ITIL v3 - ITIL is rocking the service industry in general and it's CM practices are awesome!
6. ISO 9000-3 - oldie but goodie - application of ISO 9000 to software development with some explicit references to CM
7. ISO 9001:2000 - establishes the Quality Management System - CM is essential to this effort!

plowing your way through this material is non-trivial. I am knee deep in all of these now.

Keep in mind that you need to get to a place where you understand how to operationalize each step of the standard or framework that you choose to use. Are you finding it hard to do this? Well then you came to the right place. Write to me with your
questions on standards and frameworks and we will asnwer them online here.

Now back to our main topic - standards and frameworks will greatly enhance your ability to deploy excellent SCM solutions.  For example, the (isaca) Cobit controls give you a great deal of useful information in making your CM practices more effective and, of course, in compliance (for those who are affected) with Sarbanes-Oxley federal laws. IEEE 828 gives you valuable insight into how your should write your CM Plan. Instead of
reinventing the wheel, learning from your colleagues will allow you to have the time free to do much more important things like relax, drink beer and of course peruse all the articles on CM Crossroads!

Oh and BTW - granny's turned out pretty nice and the carpenters were blessed with the fact that I spent my time working on CM Crossroads instead of trying to figure how to work that dump truck!


Bob Aiello
http://www.linkedin.com/in/BobAiello
raiello [at] acm.org

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Fred Carney said:

... Standrads does give you a good and solid basis to work from. I've been involved in hardware CM for about 25 years. The first time was 1982 when I've just completed my mechanical Draughtment diploma, and then they put me into the change control departmnent, where 100's of changes per week was nothing. The company had various relevant precedures and standrads, but the best way for me was my direct head showed me the ropes. Only when I have settled in, doing the things I have to do as I was told by my direct head according the companies procedures and standards without me knowing it, I could understand and measure myself against the standards. What I saying is, yes you need standards so that everyone in the organization can be measured against those standards, but the best way to learn a standard is when someone teach you the correct way. That is the way I taught various employees during my career. Especially with CM, I tell the people the do's and dont's, but also why it's wrong or right, using case studies.

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January 16, 2009
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