SSC SAN DIEGO POLICY FOR SOFTWARE CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT

Version 1.1 - 10/9/97

The purpose of Software Configuration Management is to establish and maintain the integrity of the products of the software project throughout the project's software life cycle.

Software Configuration Management involves identifying the configuration of the software (i.e., selected software work products and their descriptions) at given points in time, systematically controlling changes to the configuration, and maintaining the integrity and traceability of the configuration throughout the software life cycle. The work products placed under software configuration management include the software products that are delivered to the customer (e.g., the software requirements document and the code) and the items that are identified with or required to create these software products (e.g., the compiler).

SSC San Diego projects shall:

1. Plan software configuration management activities.

2. Identify, control, and make available selected software work products.

3. Control changes to identified software work products.

4. Inform affected groups and individuals of the status and content of software baselines.

5. Establish a board having the authority for managing the project's software baselines (i.e., a software configuration control board - SCCB).

6. Appoint a group to be responsible for coordinating and implementing SCM for the project (i.e., the SCM group).

7. Provide adequate resources and funding for performing the SCM activities.

8. Train members of the SCM group in the objectives, procedures, and methods for performing their SCM activities.

9. Train members of the software engineering group and other software-related groups to perform their SCM activities.

10. Prepare a SCM plan for each software project according to a documented procedure.

11. Use a documented and approved SCM plan as the basis for performing the SCM activities.

12. Establish a configuration management library system as a repository for the software baselines.

13. Identify the software work products to be placed under configuration management.

14. Initiate, record, review, approve, and track change requests and problem reports for all configuration items/units according to a documented procedure.

15. Control changes to baselines according to a documented procedure.

16. Create products from the software baseline library and control their release according to a documented procedure.

17. Record the status of configuration items/units according to a documented procedure.

18. Develop standard reports documenting the SCM activities and the contents of the software baseline and make available to affected groups and individuals.

19. Conduct software baseline audits according to a documented procedure.

20. Make and use measurements to determine the status of the SCM activities.

21. Review the SCM activities with senior management on a periodic basis.

22. Review the SCM activities with the project manager on both a periodic and event-driven basis.

23. Have the SCM group periodically audit software baselines to verify that they conform to the documentation that defines them.

24. Conduct reviews or audits by the software quality assurance group on the activities and work products for SCM and reports the results.

Software Project Managers are responsible for implementing this policy.

The Software Engineering Process Office (SEPO) is responsible for maintaining this policy.