SAE8579 The Evolution of Configuration Management (CM) Into an Accelerating Digital World

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.