Project Management — Planning Phase: (9 of 12) — Change and Configuration Management Plan

Learn how to develop Change and Configuration Management Plan. Changes must be vetted and managed to ensure that they are within the project scope and are communicated to all stakeholders. This document identifies the project components that are governed by the change control process, and the documentation of change process.

How to Develop Change and Configuration Management Plan

Configuration management is the on-going process of identifying and managing changes to deliverables and other work products. In conjunction with change control management, there is configuration management. Project managers interested in utilizing configuration management know that it is about identifying and establishing a plan before change is needed. It opens up the opportunity for change control through documentation, accountability and the regular auditing of the project. Configuration management comes after a project baseline is set. Once the project has been defined, configuration management does the following:

• Evaluates each system, resource, and component of the project.
• Coordinates who will approve or disapprove change and what processes will be utilized to configure change.
• Coordinates who will ensure changes are realized along with accountability.
• Coordinates who will implement or request the change.
• Provides documentation, or a library of sorts, specific to your project on how controls were set, defined, implemented and documented.

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