Configuration Management:Layout 1 10/13/10 4:59 PM Page 118
CONFIGURATION MANAGEMENT
Producing a fully integrated CMS needs to be treated as an entire lifecycle
development project, with long-term financial support and resources and
sufficient capabilities in-house to deliver the solution. You must understand
the problem and scope the requirements before starting, which includes
understanding the scope of integration. Consider and understand the total cost of
ownership, including the cost of keeping the knowledge of how it all works within
easy reach through properly maintained documentation and training of operators,
those responsible for day-to-day operation of the CMS and maintainers, and those
responsible for maintaining and developing the CMS supporting applications and
infrastructure. Using in-house resources is often more cost-effective than the
alternatives expanded below providing you have the specialist skills and trained
personnel available and can ensure that all involved are working towards an
agreed objective.
You should ensure that you set realistic timescales, establish common naming
conventions, produce good-quality documentation and make adequate and
supportive tools available. Stakeholders need to be identified and involved from
the start and good project management, which can collaborate with the in-house
technical team, is vital.
You must have a good business case and business sponsorship from a point high
enough in the organisation to be effective. You must achieve buy-in to the finally
agreed scope, which might end up as a compromise and might have to ‘multilayer’
the available views: so, for example, several Operational Services might be linked
to form a User Service, and perhaps email, plus Citrix
®
, plus web access, plus an
Office Suite might be linked to form a Standard Desktop Service.
External systems integration
Delegates thought that clear objectives and requirements, with good project
management, are especially important if you are going on this route. You’ll need a
really clear understanding of the systems to be integrated (and good descriptions
of them). You’ll need to follow standard project management procedures as well as
normal Development, Testing, Acceptance and Production (DTAP) project phases,
with a clear definition of the outputs required. You must have a clear definition to
which the external agency can work.
You’ll need to establish, in your requirements, what you need to know now and
anticipate what you might require in the future. Test managers should be involved
from the start. You’ll need a clear statement of the processes involved and you’ll
want to involve key users and their management right from the beginning,
together with experienced people from your project team.
Once again, the business case and sponsorship at a high enough management
level is important and normal project management good practice applies: SLAs,
requirements etc. Think big, start small: dig deep first, then widen the scope,
thus ensuring that you retain in-house control of the work effort.
There are other special issues to consider when using external system integrators,
such as ensuring that there is adequate training of in-house staff and effective
knowledge transfer at the end of the project. You won’t want to end up with
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