Configuration Management

QSI has core competencies and experience in performing configuration management (CM), which covers the identification, recording, tracking, and reporting of software, software licenses, servers, network storage, and network devices. Our configuration management plan describes the technical and administrative functions and databases necessary to identify and document the technical and architectural configuration requirements of systems, processes, control changes, deviations, and waivers to these requirements. Our configuration management (CM) process enabled the project to control and provide a repeatable process to manage information technology (IT) components as they evolve in all stages of development and maintenance support. Our CM process implements required steps for the project teams and stakeholders to identify, communicate, implement, document, and manage changes. We also ensured the integrity of the items placed under its control. Our staff has the knowledge to ensure that configuration management processes are understood, documented, and evolved to fulfill the Navy and Marine Corps needs and CM requirements.  Additionally, our developers keep track of the source code, documentation, problems, changes requested, and changes made with the main objective to protect the production environment from changes that are potentially disruptive or have unacceptable risk associated with them. Our change control process requires business justification, installation and fallback procedures, and escalation procedures.  We also establish change / back-out procedures. 

Our expertise and management of the process ensures that changes to the configuration items are authorized and performed in an orderly and appropriate sequence.  We provide and facilitate standards for moving configuration items among the project’s system environments (e.g., development, test, and production).  We also ensure that the migration process is defined to maintain coherence of configuration items and their relationships as these CIs move among the multiple system environments. Our process prefers using multiple system environments to reduce the possibility of contention between different efforts competing for the same resources and data.  Furthermore, the migration process minimizes the re-creation of CIs in subsequent environments, as CIs will be migrated from one environment to another.  

QSI will introduce CM methods based on industry best practices and our lessons learned.  Our approach to CM is straightforward:

  • Reference proven frameworks (e.g., ITIL, CMMI)
  • Draw upon our depth and breadth of cm and software development lifecycle (SDLC) experience
  • Assess the government’s current cm plan
  • And institute continuous process improvement

Our continuous process improvement focus identifies what works well and fix what does not.  Following this approach ultimately leads to a CM plan that is easy to follow and execute and is effective within the established working environment.  QSI’s approach to CM has always been to recommend the use of a configuration management database (CMDB) to serve as the source library for the details of all the elements that an organization uses to provide and manage its IT services.  One way to achieve CM objectives is to leverage past and on-going successes at Navy and Marine Corps projects. Our staff has provided the primary consulting and technical services for several developments, implementation, and support of CM policies and the selection and implementation of supporting CM hardware and software.  These efforts have aided clients in effectively managing change requests, performing analysis and developing change impact assessments, designing solutions, and promoting those changes through various CM environments (Development, Test, Acceptance, and Production).  

 

We know that successful implementation of CM requires adherence to the approved DoD, Navy, Marine Corps, and ITIL policies, processes, and procedures.  At the same time, we recognize that CM must remain flexible to address our client’s needs. Our team members will work with Navy and Marine Corps projects to ensure that the policies and procedures for business systems’ software, hardware, and device configuration baselines are defined and will work to ensure the appropriate configuration management methodologies are followed 100% of the time.

 

From our experience, we recommend the use of automated testing software to improve the accuracy and quality of changes.  This will allow us to manage the testing and tracking of changes through various promotion environments.  We will continue to be proactive in preparing for promotions through all environments and will adjust quickly to changing requirements and objectives. We will use CM track to identify solutions to potential and actual problems created by uncovered defects.  

Our staff will develop, implement, update and maintain process flows, configuration diagrams, policy documents, user guides, metric reports, and change records. They will work with Navy and Marine Corps teams to ensure configuration diagrams are properly updated to reflect current baselines.  In addition to the aforementioned tasks, QSI staff will conduct quarterly reviews of all processes, policy documents, user guides, and configuration diagrams to ensure they are up-to-date, and on a monthly basis, the team will develop and present metric reports.