To Fix CM Begins with Proper Training
by Vince Guess
What Information? Who's Involved?
Any information which may impact safety, quality, schedule, cost or the environment must be managed. Each activity within the supply chain must be involved in the management process.
What is Change Management?
Change management is the backbone of information management and a subset of CM. The best CM process is one that can best accommodate change and assure that all affected information remains clear, concise and valid.
What is Data Management?
Data management is a subset of information management. Information management is inclusive of all documents, data, forms and records.
What is Requirements Management?
Requirements management is much more than managing a customer's contractual requirements. That is the tip of the iceberg. Each document and each data element, once released, is a requirement to its user. Consequently, requirements management is essentially information management. A requirement is not a requirement until it has been validated and released.CM Skills, CM Goals and Challenges
Once the CM process and objectives are properly defined and understood, it is possible to define the required skills. The required skills involve information management, change management, validation and verification. The ability to accommodate change and assure that requirements remain clear, concise and valid is the biggest challenge.
How Effective is Your CM Process?
Each quality, schedule or cost problem is a symptom of deficiencies in the CM process. Fix CM and those problems go away. Any organization that operates in a corrective action mode has deficiencies in CM. It is a dual-edge sword for those who operate in a corrective action mode. Resources are busy fire-fighting and the opportunities for real improvement are hidden in the smoke.
How Do You Fix Your CM Process?
Without having lived in the trenches of day-to-day operations, it is difficult to understand the problems caused by inadequate information. Whatever it takes to assure that the information being used to run the business is clear, concise and valid, that is what it takes to fix your CM process. Ability to accommodate change is the first prerequisite.
The value of CM cannot be appreciated until recognizing that it is a process which makes other core business processes work. That is the understanding that is lacking. The needed training is that which brings such dependencies into proper perspective. Such training will someday begin in the university (see meeting notice on page 3). What is CM?
CM is the process of managing configurations. CM is accomplished by managing the information about those configurations and assuring that the configurations conform.
Institute of Configuration Management Scottsdale, AZ 85261-5656 Tel: (480) 998-8600 Fax: (480) 998-8923 Email: info@icmhq.com