Advanced Testing of Systems-of-Systems, Volume 2

9Configuration Management

According to CMMI-DEV v1.3, the goal of configuration management – or version management which is closely related – is to establish and maintain the integrity of deliverables (hardware and software) using the identification, control and monitoring of configurations, as well as configuration audits. In systems-of-systems, as in all slightly complex systems, configuration management is a very important element to master, given the multitude of components to manage, the complexity of systems and functionalities, the interactions between requirements, tests, test results, data structures, software components, equipment, products, and systems to be mastered, coordinated and managed. This form the design of the systems and the system-of-systems, as well as throughout the life of the systems and the system-of-systems for their maintenance and logistical supply.

9.1. Why manage configuration?

According to Humble and Farley (2011), if we can answer “yes” to all the following questions, we have a good configuration management system for our components:

– Am I able to reproduce any of my environments, including versions of operating systems, patches, network configuration, application stack for the various applications that interact with my system-of-systems?

– Can I easily make a change to any of the above and deploy to one or more of my environments?

– Am I able to visualize any change that has taken place on a particular environment and trace it back to ...