If software engineering is the house, configuration management (CM) is the foundation. As such, the configuration management area was the first area set up on the SoftwareEngineering.info web site.

Without CM, chaos rules! Changes are overwritten. No one knows who made the change or why the change was needed. Customer's problems with released code cannot be duplicated on-site.

What is CM? A definitive definition brings counter definitions. No one definition seems to be comprehensive enough to cover all areas. And in our view, some areas commonly considered under CM are more apt to be defined under other areas. From our view, CM is mainly used to track changes to software and related documents with the ability to precisely identify which versions of software modules were used to create a software release.

Having been a configuration manager for a large air traffic control system, the most amazing story I can provide you is when the CM tool we were using for the project had an error in the CM tool itself. The vendor (who shall remain anonymous!) could not locate or recreate a previously released version of their product.