An excerpt from the Podcast and Transcription: Project Thinking In Configuration Management
Joe: Should every part of an organization have a configuration management system then?
Jon Quigley: It should have some kind of change. It should identify the things that matter down the stream or that have to be coordinated and the things that impact your end customer. I could tell a story; I had recently given a presentation, and this gentleman came up to me and says, we have configuration management issues. We have a system we’re building and here’s the part number for the system. One customer has three or four of these models and a card goes bad in model A, in one version of it, so they reach into one of the machines not being used, pulled that same card out, and put it on this same piece of equipment and it doesn’t work. If those were in fact the same machines like they were supposed to be, like their order information says or part number suggests, then theoretically, any card that was in one machine should be able to be put in another machine if it’s configured similarly and work, but it didn’t.
Joe: When something like that happens, I guess in software, it’s not that what I would say uncommon for something like that, is it?
Jon Q: No, it’s not. In fact, I think that’s one of the big failures you see. I’ve seen where the definition of the modules that go into the compile are not quite there, so you’re not sure which ones were in the last build. So this present build, you may be used a different module and something that used to work no longer does. Or if you’re coordinating, let’s leave software for a little bit because many mechanical people might think, oh this only applies to software. It only applies to software; that’s a fact and largely because you can’t see it, but this does apply in the mechanical world as well when you’re coordinating your designs for mechanical parts. This part fits with that part or that part number and if you change something, a part number or one of those parts, you have to consider whether it impacts the other part. You see often where a change — somebody thinks a subtle change in an angle of a bracket mounting for this system has no impact anywhere else in the system until you put the parts together and go to verify the product or the system, and then you find out that that bracket means I can’t build this system at all in a way that would work.
Related Podcast and Transcription: Project Thinking In Configuration Management
About: Jon M. Quigley PMP CTFL is a principal and founding member of Value Transformation, a product development training and cost improvement organization established in 2009. He has nearly twenty five years of product development experience, ranging from embedded hardware and software through verification and project management.
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