SAE SAE8579

The purposeful integration of existing and emerging technologies into CM practice will enable collaboration with supporting systems and provide stakeholders access to authoritative and trusted data in a timely fashion at their desktop to help drive educated decision making. This lays to rest the misguided myth that CM and supporting systems operate at cross-purposes. What does it mean to have CM in a world of new initiatives and 2-week sprints (i.e., time-boxed work periods), multiple increments producing Minimum Viable Products (MVP) and synchronized with Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) while being digitally transformed? MBSE initiatives drive the jump from “2D” data to “3D” data, thereby becoming a Model-Centric practice. Products now enable technology to push the product lifecycle management process to new levels of efficiency and confidence. This mindset is evidenced by five major functions of CM, as discussed below, and described in EIA-649C. In today’s digitally motivated environment, it becomes necessary to define where Configuration Management (CM) fits into new and emerging development methodologies of the world we live in today, and where we expect it to be in years to come. This document’s intent is three-part. Explore the possibilities as (1) CM professionals provide guidance in a digitally transformed world that uses new development approaches by the (2) emerging software industry, and (3) non-CM practitioners can now recognize and appreciate the value of CM and its contributions to the success of new and existing initiatives and products. That is not to say, however, that CM cannot be enhanced and made more effective by the responsible use of enabling technology. What this document describes are the next steps forward by uniting CM and software into a cohesive coupling that supports one another and furthers the goals of each.