Software Configuration Management - Definitions

Baseline - Reviewed and agreed upon. Items to be baselined include but are not limited to requirements documents, source code, test plans, distribution media, and schedule. Why baseline the schedule? To ensure that major changes to the schedule are visible and approved.

Change Control Board (CCB) - A formal authority that reviews and approves/rejects SCRs.

Configuration Audit - Defined project audits and reviews. Ensures that all required deliverables have been produced.

Configuration Item (CI) - One or more items to be baselined as a single unit. For documents, the document is generally a single CI. For software, all the source code, libraries,  and installation scripts for a program is generally treated as a single CI. Reusable libraries, however, may be treated as a separate CI since they are intended for reuse across projects.

Promotion - Point at which a CI is put under more formal change control. Common promotion points include: delivery to integration testing, release to validation, release to customer.

Software Change Request (SCR) - A formal method of requesting a change to a baselined CI. Note that the key here is that it is requesting a change to a baseline. If the CI has not been baselined (such as fixing bugs found during development) then an SCR is no appropriate.

Status Accounting - What are the CI's being controlled, how are CI's added or accessed, and what changes have been approved.